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Sometimes it is possible to read or view something that completely changes the way one looks at things. I had that experience last week when I read an article at Lobelog entitled “A Plea for Common Sense on Missile Defense,” written by Joe Cirincione, a former staffer on the House Armed Services Committee who now heads the Ploughshares Fund, which is a Washington DC based global foundation that seeks to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The article debunks much of the narrative being put out by the White House and Pentagon regarding missile defense. To be sure, it is perfectly reasonable to mistrust anything that comes out of the federal government justifying war given its track record going back to the War of 1812. And the belligerent posture of the United States towards Iran and North Korea can well be condemned based on its own merits, threatening war where there are either no real interests at stake or where a diplomatic solution has for various reasons been eschewed.

But the real reason why the White House gets away with saber rattling is historical, that the continental United States has not experienced the consequences of war since Pancho Villa invaded in 1916. This is a reality that administration after administration has exploited to do what they want when dealing with foreign nations: whatever happens “over there” will stay “over there.”

Americans consequently do not know war except as something that happens elsewhere and to foreigners, requiring only that the U.S. step in on occasion and bail things out, or screw things up depending on one’s point of view. This is why hawks like John McCain, while receiving a “Liberty” award from Joe Biden, can, with a straight face, get away with denouncing those Americans who have become tired of playing at being the world’s policeman. He describes them as fearful of “the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, [abandoning] the ideals we have advanced around the globe, [refusing] the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism.”

McCain’s completely fatuous account of recent world history befits a Navy pilot who was adept at crashing his planes and almost sank his own aircraft carrier. He also made propaganda radio broadcasts for the North Vietnamese after he was captured. The McCain globalist-American Exceptionalism narrative is also, unfortunately, echoed by the media. The steady ingestion of lies and half-truths is why the public puts up with unending demands for increased defense spending, accepting that the world outside is a dangerous place that must be kept in line by force majeure. Yes, we are the good guys.

But underlying the citizenry’s willingness to accept that the military establishment should encircle the globe with foreign bases to keep the world “safe” is the assumption that the 48 States are invulnerable, isolated by broad oceans and friendly nations to the north and south. And protected from far distant threats by technology, interceptor systems developed and maintained at enormous expense to intercept and shoot down incoming ballistic missiles launched by enemies overseas.

In a recent speech, relating to the North Korean threat, President Donald Trump boasted that the United States anti-missile defenses are 97% effective, meaning that they can intercept and destroy incoming projectiles 97 times out of a 100. Trump was seeking to assure the public that whatever happens over in Korea, it cannot have an undesirable outcome over here in the continental United States nor, apparently, in Hawaii, Alaska and overseas possessions like Guam, all of which are shielded under the anti-missile defense umbrella. Trump was undoubtedly referring to, even if he was ignorant of many of the specifics, the Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) installations in Alaska and Hawaii, which are part of the existing $330 billion missile defense system.

It is certainly comforting to learn that the United States cannot be physically attacked with either nuclear or conventional weapons no matter what our government does overseas, but is it true? What if the countermeasures were somewhat closer to 0% effective? Would that change the thinking about going to war in Korea? Or about confronting Russia in Eastern Europe? And for those who think that a nuclear exchange is unthinkable it would be wise to consider the recent comments by Jack Keane of the aptly named Institute for the Study of War, a leading neoconservative former general who reportedly has the ear of the White House and reflects its thinking on the matter. Keane is not hesitant to employ the military option against Pyongyang and he describes a likely trigger for a U.S. attack to take out its nuclear facilities or remove “leadership targets” as the setting up of a ballistic missile in North Korea with a nuclear warhead mounted on top “aimed at America.” Some observers believe that North Korea is close to having the ability to reduce the size of its nukes to make that possible and, if Keane is to be believed, it would be considered an “act of war” which would trigger an immediate attack by Washington. And a counter attack by Pyongyang.

The claim of 97% reliability for the U.S.’s anti-missile defenses is being challenged by Cirincione and others, who argue that the United States can only “shoot down some…missiles some of the time.” They make a number of arguments that are quite convincing, even to a layman who has no understanding of the physics involved. I will try to keep it simple. First of all, an anti-missile interceptor must hit its target head on or nearly so and it must either actually strike the target or explode its own warhead at a close enough distance to be effective. Both objectives are difficult to achieve. An Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) travels at 5,000 meters per second. By way of comparison a bullet fired from a rifle travels at about one fifth that speed. Imagine two men with rifles standing a mile apart and firing their weapons in an attempt to have the bullets meet head on. Multiply the speed by five if one is referring to missiles, not bullets. Even using the finest radars and sensors as well as the most advanced guidance technologies, the variables involved make it much more likely that there will be a miss than a hit. Cirincione observes that “…the only way to hit a bullet is if the bullet cooperates.”

Second, the tests carried out by the Pentagon to determine reliability are essentially fraudulent. Contrary to the Donald Trump comment, the 97% accuracy is an extrapolation based on firing four anti-missile missiles at a target to make up for the fact that in the rigged tests a single interceptor has proven to be closer to only 56% accurate, and that under ideal conditions. This statistic is based on the actual tests performed since 1999 in which interceptors were able to shoot down 10 of 18 targets. The conclusion that four would result in 97% derives from the assumption that multiple interceptors increases the accuracy but most engineers would argue that if one missile cannot hit the target for any number of technical shortcomings it is equally likely that all four will miss for the same reason.

The tests themselves are carefully scripted to guarantee success. They take place in daylight, preferably at dusk to ensure maximum visibility, under good weather conditions, and without any attempt made by the approaching missile to confuse the interceptor through the use of electronic countermeasures or through the ejection of chaff or jammers, which would certainly be deployed. The targets in tests have sometimes been heated to make them easier to find and some have had transponders attached to make them almost impossible to miss. As a result, the missile interceptor system has never been tested under realistic battlefield conditions.

Even the federal government watchdog agencies have concluded that the missile interception system seldom performs. The Government Accountability Office concluded that flaws in the technology, which it describes as “failure modes,” mean that America has an “interceptor fleet that may not work as intended, prompting one Californian congressman John Garamendi to observe that “I think the answer is absolutely clear. It will not work. Nevertheless, the momentum of the fear…of the investments…[of] the momentum of the industry, it carries forward.”

The Operational Test and Evaluation Office of the Department of Defense has also been skeptical, reporting that the GMD in Alaska and Hawaii has only “…a limited capability to defend the U.S. Homeland from small numbers of simple intermediate range or intercontinental ballistic missile threats launched from North Korea…the reliability and availability of the operational [interceptors] are low.”

The dangerous overconfidence being demonstrated by the White House over the ability to intercept a North Korean missile attack might indeed be in some part a bluff, designed to convince Pyongyang that it if initiates a shooting war it will be destroyed while the U.S. remains untouched. But somehow, with a president who doesn’t do subtle very well, I would doubt that to be the case. And the North Koreans, able to build a nuclear weapon and an ICBM, would surely understand the flaws in missile defense as well as anyone.

But the real danger is that it is the American people that is being fooled by the Administration. War is thinkable, even nuclear war, if one cannot be touched by it, a truism that has enabled the sixteen-year- long and counting “global war on terror.” If that is the message being sent by the White House, it would encourage further reckless adventurism on the part of the national security state. Far better to take the North Korean threat seriously and admit that a west coast city like Seattle could well become the target of a successful nuclear weapon attack. That would demonstrate that war has real life consequences and the unfamiliar dose of honesty would perhaps result in a public demand to seriously negotiate with Pyongyang instead of hurling threats in speeches at the United Nations and on Capitol Hill.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

I’d guess that the interceptor missiles that are actually fielded are secretly equipped with nuclear warheads themselves, so this makes it a lot easier to hit the target. Still, if the only thing able to discourage the President from nuking the Norks is the threat of them nuking us back, it’s a sign that he’s fallen under neocon domination.

Russian nukes can withstand a full blast 500 meters away and still hit their target.

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Did the hype of Star Wars in 1980′s persuade Soviet Union that they could not keep up with the US? Is it possible that the hype about the missile defense has similar objective at least in some minds in Pentagon? But Russians do not seem to be buying it this time. Putin on several occasions said that they will improve their attack capabilities and will overwhelm any defensive measures. So there is no reason to think that anything has changed about the MAD doctrine.

I can’t imagine any scenario between Russia and the US of limited nuclear exchange. It would escalate quickly to the full blown all the way attack on both sides if a limited exchange was ever attempted. And Russia has more reason to go all the way first as it is surrounded by American bases and it is at significant disadvantage in conventional forces.

The Magic Pudding
Why is the US government still pouring billions into missile defence?
http://www.monbiot.com/2008/08/19/the-magic-pudding/

.... The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing. You wouldn’t know it if you read the press releases published by the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency: the word “success” features more often than any other noun(2)....

Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it would bankrupt the country, just as the arms race helped to bring the Soviet Union down. By spending a couple of billion dollars on decoy technologies, Russia would commit the US to trillions of dollars of counter-measures. The cost ratios are such that even Iran could outspend the United States.....

... Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries which give millions in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding which won’t run out however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work....

If we seek to understand US foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government’s interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at key stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.

From what I read, the US had information on Soviet assets in NATO (from a defector) who were rolled up when Star Wars was getting into high gear. The Russian scientists didn't think a lot of hocus-pocus like X-ray lasers were viable but the USSR was flying blind because their assets working near those fields were gone. They didn't know if all the hype coming from the US was garbage or if there really had been breakthroughs. That helped push Gorbachev into a more subservient bargaining position.

Confrontation with Russia (or China for that matter) is of course BAD/MAD.
Anyone with brain gets that.

But, North Korea could be seen totally opposite.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

Any chance of skipping “virtue signalling” in analyzing this possibility?
Americans that is. I do get that most of the rest here either don’t care of would actually like it. Nuke on US that is. More the merrier.

What I actually don’t get is Kim’s regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.
They are going way above the self-defense level in this game, IMHO.
Some believe they are just Chinese pawn in game with Trump administration. I am not so sure about it. Such regimes do get delusional and detached from reality.
US administration/deep state also aren’t quite attached to reality.
And nukes.
That combination just ……..feels bad.

Peter, you seem to be suggesting that most commenters here hate the US enough to want it to suffer a nuclear attack, is that correct? I would say that the opposite is true and that most Unz commenters actually love the US but do hate the fact that a small clique has taken control and have led the US into needless conflicts that do threaten the US, both militarily, economically and socially.

What I actually don’t get is Kim’s regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.

No, this is not. They are a hell of a lot more reasonable than the US. Kim agreed to the proposal by Russian and China to suspend his program if the US stops it military "exercises". The US says the NK should stop the tests first before the Americans even think about talking to them. Obviously, this is not going to happen. Particularly considering that an agreement of that sort was concluded once in the past, but the US broke it almost immediately.

You see, North Korea is not at all delusional and knows full well that the US is not to be trusted and never sticks to any agreement it signs up to. Iran is a good case in point. So, they are understandably apprehensive, given their history with the US, about giving up their nukes.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

I think it'd be much more accurate to say that it is the US that is hostile to the NK regime, not the other way around. As to hitting it, are you sure the US would be permitted to hit anything so close to the China and Russia territories without retaliation? I don't think so. I think Washington knows that, too.

There is also South Korea. Try to imagine the fallout among Koreans (and Japanese, Chinese, other Asians) if their cousins are nuked. In the short run it might even work - if it would be an extremely targeted attack. But there is also longer run and for decades US would not be able to live this down. Generations of Koreans would grow up bitter that it was deemed ok to nuke people like them. War propaganda tends to wear off and only angry emotional memories remain.

And the Europeans, they would be apoplectic, probably the end of their American infatuation.

So the downside is potentially enormous. My guess is that fat Kim and his crew just want to be left alone. And they are scared. What's the point is stirring up a wasp nest? Now just imagine Chinese reaction if somebody drops a nuke on their border. It wouldn't be pretty.

As usual, you are completely full of shit... but then, anyone with, er, half a brain, can see you are merely a virulent little war mongering Internet troll, always asking for some more war, from the comfort of whatever little insect hole you type your garbage. It reminds me of what another poster wrote around here:
'Amerikastan,
Amerikastan,
Wants to fight Russia and China,
Iran and North Korea,
Can’t even beat,
The Taliban*.'

This is why hawks like John McCain, while receiving a “Liberty” award from Joe Biden, can, with a straight face, get away with denouncing those Americans who have become tired of playing at being the world’s policeman. He describes them as fearful of “the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, [abandoning] the ideals we have advanced around the globe, [refusing] the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism.”

And this is why we are where we are – our government is infested by the likes of McCain, Lindsay Graham, and hundreds of others of their ilk. There is no milk of human kindness that flows in my veins when I look at these despicable creatures who have done so much harm to so many people and continue to exist, cancer and all, like Darth Cheney with his nuclear heart, while the innocents fall by the wayside from their evil.

I had wished him dead, but as a friend reminded me, it is better for him to live, suffering from excruciating agony as cancer demolishes him one cell at a time, jabbing his brain every second of every day – to the brink of madness and just a step behind the precipice that would end his life, living for decades more, tortured and despised.

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

— Herman Melville

Even the federal government watchdog agencies have concluded that the missile interception system seldom performs.

I can’t find that citation at the moment, but I recall a report from US military experts that placed the accuracy of interceptor missiles at about 10% in real-world conditions. I vaguely recall that during the Gulf war, we had placed Patriot interceptors in Israel to protect the chosen from Saddam’s Scud missiles, and apparently only a few of those decrepit scuds were successfully intercepted. I believe the lack of accuracy of these Patriot missiles was hushed up.

Meanwhile, the Russian S-300, S-400, and the soon-to-appear S-500 missile batteries have demonstrated very impressive results. Now our “allies” are all scampering over to Moscow to acquire these instead of our duds, following the utter failure of our $0.5 Trillion F-35 embarrassment.

It is high time for us to ask how we got here and who is responsible. I will give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

The president of the United States and the Congress are elected by the Americans, they are the wishes of the American people. If POTUS and the Congress are evil, you cannot blame them alone while there is no public discontent against them.

This is, unfortunately, a far more convincing picture of reality than the fables presented by the lamestream corporate media presstitutes. I also know Cirincione to be a reliable source based upon his record.

Apart from the use of hypersonic corkscrew ICBMs with multiple dummy warheads among the MIRVs, the foremost expert on ABM, Ted Postel (B.S., Physics, MIT; Ph.D., Engineering, MIT), believes you can defeat any ABM system using countermeasures based on the system’s technology.

In the case of missile defenses of the type the United States is building, all the objects that would be seen by the interceptors would appear like points of light. Unless the interceptor has prior knowledge, like some points of light having a well-defined brightness relative to others, it has absolutely no way of determining what it is looking at and as a result, what to home in on.

A common misconception is that, were such countermeasures to succeed, warheads and decoys must look alike. All that is required is that all the objects look different and that there is no knowledge of what to expect. As a result, an enemy can modify the shape of the warhead (for example by inflating a balloon around it) and completely alter its appearance to a distance sensor. If an enemy is capable of building ICBMs and nuclear warheads, the enemy certainly has the technology to build and deploy balloons, as well as to do simple things to modify the appearance of warheads. The technology to implement such countermeasures is very modest while the technology to defeat it basically does not exist — there is no science that can be utilized by the engineers that will allow the defense to determine what it is seeing.

So my objection to the high-altitude missile defenses that are being deployed by the United States is very simple — they have no chance of working against any adversary who has even a modest understanding of what they are doing.

We are the ones who should be worried: about being held responsible for that spillover.

If the US government hits Pyongyang with even "small" tactical nuclear weapons, how will we avoid irradiating South Korea and China, which are very nearby?

What will the Chinese public demand of their government if hundreds of thousands of Chinese people in China itself are irradiated and badly damaged, at the least, by a US nuke? Would they be wrong to demand it?

Sorry to inform you that you are the specimen of John McCain's die-hard supporters, bigotry, ignorant and bellicose, who have been brain washed from cradle to grave by toxic warmongers in the Washington beltway and reinforced with excessive flag saluting.

North Korea will not start war first, it is only protesting the aggressions displayed by the American and SK against it. The American is the aggressor, and the Americans is most likely to trigger an Amaggardon.

The anti-missile systems have been stunning successes at the one thing that really matters: Boatloads of money have been channeled to the cronies who matter, and some of that has been recycled (laundered?) through political and charitable (think tanks, for example) donations that keep the politicos gainfully and lucratively employed while in office and afterwards.

If our missile defense systems are so hot, why haven’t the interceptors, stationed in Alaska, Japan, S. Korea and on US Navy ships in the area, shot down any of Kim’s missiles that go flying over Japan?

We’re being sold a bill of goods, or BS for short. Those missile defense systems make for fat Pentagon contracts, but will do no more to protect Americans than the old ‘Duck and Cover’ propaganda we were taught back in the 1950′s and 1960′s. Just duck and cover under your school desk, then after the nukes pops off, get back to living.

With all the colleges and university’s the USA has, how can Americans be so stupid?

"If our missile defense systems are so hot, why haven’t the interceptors, stationed in Alaska, Japan, S. Korea and on US Navy ships in the area, shot down any of Kim’s missiles that go flying over Japan?"

1) They aren't armed.
2) They are in outer space when over Japan, so technically not a violation of Japanese airspace.
3) If we miss, the world has evidence that the Emperor has no clothing.

The bigger lie here – seriously – is that there are ‘nuclear weapons’ at all. If you look at the evidence, it’s clear that ‘nuclear weapons’ as a whole were fake from the beginning, with multiple proofs now that, e.g., Hiroshima was a chemical fire-bombing war crime, just like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Dresden, Hamburg.

The political context for the nuclear weapons scam after Hiroshima, was the USA-Moscow deal in Stalin’s later years, that Stalin would pretend to be a ‘nuclear weapons power’ too, riches & tech would be passed on to Soviet elites (as Antony Sutton, ‘Best Enemy Money Can Buy’ proved was happening); and the world would be in fear of ‘nuclear terror’ supporting big-power domination of the earth & trillions of profits for oligarchs via ‘weapons industries’.

Swedish nuclear engineer Anders Björkman, once asked to investigate ‘nuclear weapons’ for Sweden, has been showing in detail for years that nuclear weapons are impossible, fake, & have never existed (versus nuclear power, which does work). From a recent overview of why Hiroshima was not a ‘nuclear’ or ‘atomic bomb’ explosion:

- The area destroyed in Hiroshima, was only one-fourth the size of the area destroyed in Tokyo fire-bombing with identical devastation

- US military Major Alexander de Seversky, surveying Japanese cities shortly afterwards, found wooden-house-burned Hiroshima to show no signs at all of anything other than chemical fire-bombing, just like Tokyo, Yokohama & Osaka … central iron-steel buildings were intact, fragile objects undamaged, even flag poles still up beneath ‘ground zero’ … no spot where things had been ‘vapourised’

- The ‘smoking gun’ proving Hiroshima was fake, is in 1945 US military records, logging 66 aeroplanes as ‘chemically fire-bombing Imabari, Japan’, close to Hiroshima, at the same date & hour as the alleged ‘atomic bomb’ … Imabari which no longer existed, having been totally destroyed in 2 previous fire-bombing raids … this was the fleet that fire-bombed Hiroshima

- Photographs of Hiroshima smoke look exactly like columns of smoke from chemical fire-bombing, confirmed by Japanese witnesses who eventually did speak … in general, the ‘mushroom clouds’ eventually marketed as the ‘nuclear weapon signature’, are also from certain types of chemical explosions, as recently exploding Chinese factories have shown

- A 1990 medical study, completing 40 years of investigation of Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors, showed no genetic damage, as is typical of those exposed to too-high radiation

Recently, there has been a move to wind down the nuclear weapons hoax, with this year’s ‘UN resolution to ban & destroy all nuclear weapons’ … a ‘great favour’ the coming one-world globalist government will do for us, putting the nuclear weapons hoax to rest. They can claim to dis-assemble all the nuclear weapons like South Africa claimed to do in the past

But over 72 years, all 10 alleged ‘nuclear bomb nations’ have played along, in what has been a global scam, trillions for oligarchs owning armaments industries, the ‘nuclear weapons’ scam a major tool for the big and medium powers who are allowed to claim to have them … Consider the history:

1960 – France chafes not to be 2nd class to Brits – FRANCE & DE GAULLE HAVE THE BOMB

1964 – China upgraded to major league – COMMIE CHINA HAS THE BOMB

1966 – Israel joins the club in time to terrorise & blackmail Arabs in 1967 & 1973 wars – JEWS HAVE THE BOMB & JEWS ARE READY TO SAMSON OPTION EVERYBODY, later ‘confirmed’ by Mordechai Vanunu to MI6 London Times & then maybe living on Haifa beach, not ‘in Israeli prison’, like ‘not really in Ecuador Embassy’ Julian Assange

1979 – South Africa’s white apartheid gov gets to play – WHITE RACIST SOUTH AFRICA HAS THE BOMB READY TO KILL BLACK PEOPLE … but ‘dismantles bombs’ before Mandela & black government can find out the scam

1998 – Pakistan becomes central player in new Western anti-Muslim theme – PAKISTANI MUSLIMS HAVE THE BOMB & OSAMA OR TERRORISTS MIGHT GET AHOLD OF IT

2006 – North Korea, always making deals, gets to upgrade – CRAZY NORTH KOREA HAS THE BOMB

Relative last year on vacation met a 93 y/o man who actually witnessed the Trinity nuclear explosion in 1945. Same relative at work met the guy who designed the first H-bomb trigger: a motor driven spark gap powered by a 10mfd/10KV capacitor. No EG&G Krytron triggers there buddy. The "Starfish Prime" space H-Bomb 1.4Mt detonation on July 9, 1962 was observed in Hawaii and the electrons injected into the earths magnetic field reflected back and forth from each pole can still be detected.

"The bigger lie here – seriously – is that there are ‘nuclear weapons’ at all. If you look at the evidence, it’s clear that ‘nuclear weapons’ as a whole were fake from the beginning, with multiple proofs now that, e.g., Hiroshima was a chemical fire-bombing war crime, just like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Dresden, Hamburg."

Well thanks for being brave enough to float such a rare or radical concept. Believe or not, I have had that thought too, but only passingly, like the moon landing spoof from a Sound stage kind of thing.

But, if it is considered that there was once said: ''The bigger the Lie, the more will believe it." Then so, why not build and set up a really huge one? In the first place all of it was developed in the most (huge) top secrecy of the Manhattan Project, all we know is derived from a cottage industry of leakage and the talking head privileged professionals who act as intercessors to the commons or some shit over decades, and the arcanity of nuclear physics which limits quite a lot of folks from being in much position to judge it all.

So if these geniuses are so authentic, why aren't they doing a Manhattan project to put that gaddamned Fukashima disaster back in the bottle, is that because it isn't really what it is supposed to be? If it poisons the sea then it is very important enough

They want it both ways: " you be scared and ignorant, and they threaten to bomb everything to oblivion and poison the Earth for a Gazillian and half years, and they act like they have better things to do. The China Syndrome must be overhyped BS.

But seriously, even if it is only a big lie, it still is cause for concern!!! I think the radiation part is true, but the bomb part, maybe that could be done with tons and tons of… TNT, for real!

General Keane sits on the Board of Directors of a company called General Dynamics. I believe Michael Scheuer has suggested former Pentagon officials, generals etc. should be forbidden from taking employment at the many defence contractors once they retire. The US, especially with its advantageous geography, is a real anomaly in the West with its elevated defence spending.

A measured and timely warning. Although not a scientist or engineer myself, I find Mr Giraldi’s logic persuasive.

I can never understand why anyone would contemplate with equanimity the prospect of a war that could – and quite probably would – kill every human being in the world, and spell the end of the human race. That must be a fascinating question to all students of the human mind.

the prospect of a war that could – and quite probably would – kill every human being in the worl

d

Don't worry Tom. There is no chance of a nuclear war destroying every human being on earth. There have been 2000 plus atmospheric ground, sea and air bursts since 1945 and still human life expectancy (and population) is increasing. My guess, is that after a full exchange of all the nuclear weapons on earth...most of them targeted on cities and towns...there will be at least a quarter of a billion humans left after a period of mass starvation culls the approximately 4 billion survivors of the blasts.

Two points here: (1) Is there any rational expectation that Pyongyang would seriously negotiate? So that’s one point.

(2) The other is something that got out between the lines years ago, but if it’s true it’s so highly classified that a guy could end up in Gitmo for just thinking it. Still, I recall it was said at one time some years ago. And here it is: maybe the only way to really “hit” incoming ICBMs is to forget about a bullet hitting a bullet, what you do is you get as close as you can and then you explode nukes in the neighborhood. That would rattle the cage of the incoming enough that it would drop down wherever it was flying, like into the Pacific, say, between Hawaii and the mainland. I think this came out in the context of the “defensive” anti-missile missiles set to take off from the controversial sites in Poland and the Baltics. That would be part of the reason why Russians would never buy that those missile bases (Poland and Baltics) could ever be honestly described as purely “defensive” (like against missiles coming from Iran was the story). Remember, when all this stuff was first ramping up more than half a century ago, “mothers for survival of children” or whatever, led by Linus Pauling … the war hawks’ main slogan was “Better dead than Red”? Remember that, anyone?

So thank you, Mr. Giraldi, for helping to bring this out into the open. Americans — earthlings in general — should know … I think … maybe …

If the "secret" that we might be mounting nuke warheads on missiles for defensive purposes was that GTMO-worthy there would be standing room only in all of Cuba. The Nike missile program was doing that back in the 50s and it isn't a state secret. They were designed (in all their variants) to intercept planes and missiles/warheads at/near terminal phase. Check out Nike Hercules in Wiki.

It seems like a reasonable thesis to me. As I recall, there was criticism of the Patriot missile system that it was not as effective as first claimed when it came to knocking out Scuds launched by Iraq (which fly far more slowly than ICBMs).

I’m not so sure that the N. Koreans would scoff at the idea of missile defense though. Back in the Cold War days the Soviets were concerned enough about the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) that its implementation was considered by some to heighten, not lessen, the risk of nuclear war, since missile defense meant one side might feel encouraged to launch a first strike if it felt it confident in its ability to fend off a return volley. It’s probably safe to say the Soviets knew more about ICBM technology than N. Korea (but that was over 30 years ago, so maybe not), so if they didn’t think the idea of missile defense was baloney, I would not be so quick to write it off.

Confrontation with Russia (or China for that matter) is of course BAD/MAD.
Anyone with brain gets that.

But, North Korea could be seen totally opposite.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

Any chance of skipping "virtue signalling" in analyzing this possibility?
Americans that is. I do get that most of the rest here either don't care of would actually like it. Nuke on US that is. More the merrier.

What I actually don't get is Kim's regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.
They are going way above the self-defense level in this game, IMHO.
Some believe they are just Chinese pawn in game with Trump administration. I am not so sure about it. Such regimes do get delusional and detached from reality.
US administration/deep state also aren't quite attached to reality.
And nukes.
That combination just ........feels bad.

Peter, you seem to be suggesting that most commenters here hate the US enough to want it to suffer a nuclear attack, is that correct? I would say that the opposite is true and that most Unz commenters actually love the US but do hate the fact that a small clique has taken control and have led the US into needless conflicts that do threaten the US, both militarily, economically and socially.

This is why hawks like John McCain, while receiving a “Liberty” award from Joe Biden, can, with a straight face, get away with denouncing those Americans who have become tired of playing at being the world’s policeman. He describes them as fearful of “the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, [abandoning] the ideals we have advanced around the globe, [refusing] the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism.”

And this is why we are where we are – our government is infested by the likes of McCain, Lindsay Graham, and hundreds of others of their ilk. There is no milk of human kindness that flows in my veins when I look at these despicable creatures who have done so much harm to so many people and continue to exist, cancer and all, like Darth Cheney with his nuclear heart, while the innocents fall by the wayside from their evil.

I had wished him dead, but as a friend reminded me, it is better for him to live, suffering from excruciating agony as cancer demolishes him one cell at a time, jabbing his brain every second of every day – to the brink of madness and just a step behind the precipice that would end his life, living for decades more, tortured and despised.

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

— Herman Melville

Even the federal government watchdog agencies have concluded that the missile interception system seldom performs.

I can’t find that citation at the moment, but I recall a report from US military experts that placed the accuracy of interceptor missiles at about 10% in real-world conditions. I vaguely recall that during the Gulf war, we had placed Patriot interceptors in Israel to protect the chosen from Saddam’s Scud missiles, and apparently only a few of those decrepit scuds were successfully intercepted. I believe the lack of accuracy of these Patriot missiles was hushed up.

Meanwhile, the Russian S-300, S-400, and the soon-to-appear S-500 missile batteries have demonstrated very impressive results. Now our “allies” are all scampering over to Moscow to acquire these instead of our duds, following the utter failure of our $0.5 Trillion F-35 embarrassment.

It is high time for us to ask how we got here and who is responsible. I will give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

Besides, wrt nuclear weapons, a defense needs to be 100% effective. The entire medical system of any country would be overwhelmed dealing with the consequences of a single successful population center burst. Unlike for conventional weapons, a 97% interception rate, let alone 50%, is not good enough.
And, except perhaps the US, any industrialized nation would take a decade to recover from a single strike.

If our missile defense systems are so hot, why haven't the interceptors, stationed in Alaska, Japan, S. Korea and on US Navy ships in the area, shot down any of Kim's missiles that go flying over Japan?

We're being sold a bill of goods, or BS for short. Those missile defense systems make for fat Pentagon contracts, but will do no more to protect Americans than the old 'Duck and Cover' propaganda we were taught back in the 1950's and 1960's. Just duck and cover under your school desk, then after the nukes pops off, get back to living.

With all the colleges and university's the USA has, how can Americans be so stupid?

“If our missile defense systems are so hot, why haven’t the interceptors, stationed in Alaska, Japan, S. Korea and on US Navy ships in the area, shot down any of Kim’s missiles that go flying over Japan?”

1) They aren’t armed.
2) They are in outer space when over Japan, so technically not a violation of Japanese airspace.
3) If we miss, the world has evidence that the Emperor has no clothing.

After the rather odd Reagan-Gorbachev Reykjavik (Summit at Sea) and talk about abolishing nuclear weapons, the S.D.I. came to fore, and outer space became the new frontier where USA and the West were offered security against nuclear war.

Is it the case now that SALT is completely dead and the only nuclear shootout deterrent is the old reliable M.A.D.?

(Sigh)

How much citizens really know about superpower capacities to effectively wage nuclear war and emerge victorious is nil. I am for one uncomfortable with getting showered with tempting ads for affordable “survival kits” while multi-billionaire (1% oligarchs) can luxuriate within subsurface Pleasure Domes equipped with bowling alleys.

(Sigh) Angry with no more high level warnings about “Nuclear Freeze,” and perhaps over preponderance on the (real) Global Warning phenomenon, I am in awe how President Trump makes claim to ZUSA’s 97% effective anti-ballistic missile defense systems.

(Sigh) Does Odigo have privileged messaging systems ready to go when it comes time to “Drop The Big One?”

Is it the case now that SALT is completely dead and the only nuclear shootout deterrent is the old reliable M.A.D.?

I think you're referring to START, not SALT. SALT were arms limitation treaties (i.e. limiting growth) in the 70s. START was a treaty to reduce the stockpiles signed in the 80s. After lengthy negotiations, a new START treaty was signed in 2010.

Of course a hostile foreign power could simply ship a nuclear weapon to us via container ship – radiation detectors in the ports wouldn’t help because they would be triggered to explode if messed with and then we’d lose the port city… And a smallish nuke buried in the middle of a lot of shielding could be very hard to find unless you x-rayed each container separately. Inspect all incoming cargo shipments overseas before they come here? Impossible, and anyhow that would cost money and cost businesses time and convenience and so would never do. So missiles or not, we’re wide open to attack and that’s that.

On the other hand, in the old British comedy “The Bed Sitting Room,” England ran out of bombers and missiles and tried to mail a nuclear bomb to its enemy, but the bomb was returned for insufficient postage. The fiends!

To me, the biggest threat that a North Korean attack could pose would be EMP. All they’d have to do is get a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere somewhere above or off the west coast of the US. Setting off that would destroy much of the electronics upon which our ‘Communications Age’ relies upon with an EMP wave.

And that seems hard, or at least harder to stop. It does not require accuracy on the part of the North Korean missile(s). And it only requires that one such warhead get through the missile defenses. With a bit of subterfuge, it could possibly be disquised as yet another missile test, one that would obviously not be aimed at the US mainland, but falling short, before it explodes high in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, but close enough that the EMP wave has a direct path to much of the US. I suspect that many military electronics are hardened against this, as the effect has been known for quite some time. But the consumer electronics upon which our society relies would not be. Picture for instance every cell-phone/smart-phone going dead. And that’s just one effect.

And it seems to be a big ask to ask missile defense to stop that. Especially when in controlled test after controlled test, when the ‘defenders’ know exactly what missiles will be launched, when they will be launched, and all the information about their trajectory, the missile defense still seems to be a ‘hit-or-miss’ proposition.

Which is why we should be negotiating. Although, the main problem with that is why the North Koreans would negotiate considering the US didn’t keep its word in the 2005 agreement and is currently in the process of teaching Iran that the word of the US isn’t worth the toilet paper an agreement is written upon.

To me, the biggest threat that a North Korean attack could pose would be EMP. All they’d have to do is get a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere somewhere above or off the west coast of the US.

Actually it is harder than that. They would have to have a warhead large enough to produce the EMP pulse strong enough to damage the electronics. Then they have to hit the right spot to target the area they want to damage. Too high and the EMP pulse won't be strong enough too low and it won't have the range needed to do the damage.

Plus any equipment not under load will probably be unaffected by the EMP. The EMP threat is greatly overblown.

I'd guess that the interceptor missiles that are actually fielded are secretly equipped with nuclear warheads themselves, so this makes it a lot easier to hit the target. Still, if the only thing able to discourage the President from nuking the Norks is the threat of them nuking us back, it's a sign that he's fallen under neocon domination.

Another great article by Mr. Giraldi.

Shitposter,

That is an interesting point.

The missiles covered by the anti-ballistic missile [missile] treaty between the USA and USSR and later Russian Fed., all, I think, had nuclear warheads. The USAF’s Sprint being one example.

The treaty allowed two squadrons, then, IIRC, only one.

Finally and foolishly abrogated by the US, under, predictably, neocon influence, years ago.

Both, I would guessing, don’t push it further on those weapons, but I don’t know. The emphases in the US seem to be on

i. technology to disrupt launches,

ii. kinetic destruction, and

iii. beam weapons.

The Russian response seems mainly to make delivery systems that are impossible to foil in statistically meaningful terms.

I wonder about the effects of EMP from the nuclear-tipped ABM[M]s.

Didn’t mention that for some time, not wanting to giving North Korea ideas, but their officials have already made statements that they know the potential of a blast only for EMP. They are not stupid!

As you may knowing, a USA stratospheric bomb test over the Pacific in the 1960s blew out heavy-duty circuitry from Hawaii to many Western states.

I am adding a link to a non-related article, but it is the scariest thiing I was reading today. Srs. Read it.

The flaw in Mr Giraldi’s argument is that it postulates that there is a country somewhere out there that is willing and able to launch a nuclear first strike on the US. Not North Korea. Their nuclear “programme” depends, at very least, on rocket motors bought in from or via Russia. Every time they fire off a missile, they have to import a new motor and build a new rocket! Russia? Why would it launch a nuclear attack on anyone? If it did, what would be its target and what would be the military value of that target? Trying to cow Americans into submission by a shock attack is the mistake the Japanese made at Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, Russia is far more vulnerable to attack than North Korea. Its long northern coast is just across the Arctic from North America and most of its natural resources are close to that coastline, as is its only ice-free port with access to the open sea. Without ever needing to use nuclear weapons, the US could cripple Russia’s economy very easily. Given Russia’s elongated shape, simultaneous attacks from all sides would force Russia to split up its air defences without being able to shift them around quickly in reaction to an incoming attack. Russia is a tailor-made target for a conventional air war and in the modern world, he who controls the airspace over the battlefield wins the war! Thus, I read Mr Giraldi’s article as the usual nuclear scaremongering, “the beauty of Putin’s weapons”, so to speak! Sounds like the spooks are back to defending their Russian “asset”!

At the Pearl Harbour attack, Yamamato (who had opposed it) was expecting to sink a few carriers.

The carriers based there were all in or near what is now the northern Pacific garbage gyre, where ships almost never sail (also why the garbage is the relatively new thing, ships are not normally going there, so noticing the garbage in the gyre is recent). For no explicable reason, except that ...

The attack was lured by Rozenfeldt, it was a ruse on his part to 'GODAWAW'!

Day of Deceit, a book by a USA citizen, is to covering background quite well.

Confrontation with Russia (or China for that matter) is of course BAD/MAD.
Anyone with brain gets that.

But, North Korea could be seen totally opposite.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

Any chance of skipping "virtue signalling" in analyzing this possibility?
Americans that is. I do get that most of the rest here either don't care of would actually like it. Nuke on US that is. More the merrier.

What I actually don't get is Kim's regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.
They are going way above the self-defense level in this game, IMHO.
Some believe they are just Chinese pawn in game with Trump administration. I am not so sure about it. Such regimes do get delusional and detached from reality.
US administration/deep state also aren't quite attached to reality.
And nukes.
That combination just ........feels bad.

What I actually don’t get is Kim’s regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.

No, this is not. They are a hell of a lot more reasonable than the US. Kim agreed to the proposal by Russian and China to suspend his program if the US stops it military “exercises”. The US says the NK should stop the tests first before the Americans even think about talking to them. Obviously, this is not going to happen. Particularly considering that an agreement of that sort was concluded once in the past, but the US broke it almost immediately.

You see, North Korea is not at all delusional and knows full well that the US is not to be trusted and never sticks to any agreement it signs up to. Iran is a good case in point. So, they are understandably apprehensive, given their history with the US, about giving up their nukes.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

I think it’d be much more accurate to say that it is the US that is hostile to the NK regime, not the other way around. As to hitting it, are you sure the US would be permitted to hit anything so close to the China and Russia territories without retaliation? I don’t think so. I think Washington knows that, too.

You see, North Korea is not at all delusional and knows full well that the US is not to be trusted and never sticks to any agreement it signs up to. Iran is a good case in point. So, they are understandably apprehensive, given their history with the US, about giving up their nukes.

Agree.You are mixing two things.Giving up nukes and developing LONG RANGE nuclear capability.I'll use analogy for clarification: you apply for a gun permit for self-defense (not necessarily in US so don't get stuck on 2nd Amendment). And you want to buy .50 cal sniper rifle, not a handgun/shotgun.

As to hitting it, are you sure the US would be permitted to hit anything so close to the China and Russia territories without retaliation? I don’t think so. I think Washington knows that, too.

No.Nobody would be posting here if that was the case.We all know very well it can happen.If US NCA feels the threat is real, it WILL act.What happens after that...well...that's what science-fiction is all about isn't it (hint: The Day After)?

Why would short range deter the US? If the US is the biog threat (and it is), you need to be able to counter that threat. Seems imminently reasonable. You don't see the US scrapping its long range capability, and it has even less of a short range threat to counter.

Using your .50 caliber analogy, if your true enemy is at 500 yards and has a .50 caliber rifle, a 9mm pistol is not much for self-defense.

Again, I think the entire world agrees that the US cannot be trusted. Most are just afraid to admit it officially.

Kim agreed to the proposal by Russian and China to suspend his program if the US stops it military “exercises”. -- EugeneGur

The quotes around 'exercises' are supposed to indicate that there is something sinister and unreasonable about the military exercises, which have been conducted annually for years entirely within the boundaries of South Korea, that is, south of the 38th Parallel. Such exercises are out of rational prudence considering that North Korea did invade the South to initiate the Korean War in 1950 and continues to take an aggressive stance toward the Republic of Korea (the South).

For the Republic of Korea (the only democratically elected government on the Korean Peninsula) to agree to Kim's demand would set a precedent yielding to Kim control over military operations in the South. On top of that, the demand made by Russia and China on behalf of Kim includes that UN/USA military withdraw from Korea before Kim would agree to start negotiations. Thus, Kim demands surrender of the sovereignty of the ROK and surrender by the UN and USA before he will begin what EugeneGur and other of Kim's dupes or trolls ludicrously call "negotiations".

What has been the response of the Republic of Korea to Kim's demands that the ROK surrender its population to the deprivations of Kim's Communist military forces? It has been to send food to the North -- because they understand in Seoul that the Korean people in the North are being starved for the sake of Kim's nuclear-bomb and ICBM program.

EugeneGur is just another propagandist who takes his talking points from Kim's "Korean Central News Agency" -- EugeneGur and those like him are pathetic dupes or even agents of the only remaining Stalinist dictatorship in the world, helping to prop it up by seeking to justify its dangerously aggressive policies as somehow sane and reasonable.

Chuck, was reading of that closer to the time, and it was interesting,

Please also reading the article at the link I posted.

I like insects, excepting mosquitos and horseflies, moths if they are wantimg to eat clothes, never killing other types, hornets and wasps only if they are trying to set up near my home, also never small spiders (arachnids, not insects, yeah I know), they are seeming to eat small cockroaches throughout summer, they are welcome, between the small population of small spiders and the cockroach traps I place, not seeing many roaches! Never using insecticide.

'Duty, Honor, Atrocity: George W. Bush Receives a Character Award at West Point",
http://www.unz.com/article/duty-honor-atrocity/
,
BTW: "He apparently killed himself by running his car’s engine inside his suburban garage in Virginia." It's amazing how many such deaths have occurred near SAC bases, including SAC HQ over the years. A guy could even be forgiven for supposing that this is a standard M.O. for one or more organizations who sign off as "Air Force Secret".

As for ChuckOrloaki's "Cheney-W. Bush Zionist administration" -- I recall back during those dark days Dubbya had his photo taken, complete with the blue-and-white yarmulke, praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

Confrontation with Russia (or China for that matter) is of course BAD/MAD.
Anyone with brain gets that.

But, North Korea could be seen totally opposite.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

Any chance of skipping "virtue signalling" in analyzing this possibility?
Americans that is. I do get that most of the rest here either don't care of would actually like it. Nuke on US that is. More the merrier.

What I actually don't get is Kim's regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.
They are going way above the self-defense level in this game, IMHO.
Some believe they are just Chinese pawn in game with Trump administration. I am not so sure about it. Such regimes do get delusional and detached from reality.
US administration/deep state also aren't quite attached to reality.
And nukes.
That combination just ........feels bad.

There is also South Korea. Try to imagine the fallout among Koreans (and Japanese, Chinese, other Asians) if their cousins are nuked. In the short run it might even work – if it would be an extremely targeted attack. But there is also longer run and for decades US would not be able to live this down. Generations of Koreans would grow up bitter that it was deemed ok to nuke people like them. War propaganda tends to wear off and only angry emotional memories remain.

And the Europeans, they would be apoplectic, probably the end of their American infatuation.

So the downside is potentially enormous. My guess is that fat Kim and his crew just want to be left alone. And they are scared. What’s the point is stirring up a wasp nest? Now just imagine Chinese reaction if somebody drops a nuke on their border. It wouldn’t be pretty.

After the rather odd Reagan-Gorbachev Reykjavik (Summit at Sea) and talk about abolishing nuclear weapons, the S.D.I. came to fore, and outer space became the new frontier where USA and the West were offered security against nuclear war.

Is it the case now that SALT is completely dead and the only nuclear shootout deterrent is the old reliable M.A.D.?

(Sigh)

How much citizens really know about superpower capacities to effectively wage nuclear war and emerge victorious is nil. I am for one uncomfortable with getting showered with tempting ads for affordable "survival kits" while multi-billionaire (1% oligarchs) can luxuriate within subsurface Pleasure Domes equipped with bowling alleys.

(Sigh) Angry with no more high level warnings about "Nuclear Freeze," and perhaps over preponderance on the (real) Global Warning phenomenon, I am in awe how President Trump makes claim to ZUSA's 97% effective anti-ballistic missile defense systems.

(Sigh) Does Odigo have privileged messaging systems ready to go when it comes time to "Drop The Big One?"

Is it the case now that SALT is completely dead and the only nuclear shootout deterrent is the old reliable M.A.D.?

I think you’re referring to START, not SALT. SALT were arms limitation treaties (i.e. limiting growth) in the 70s. START was a treaty to reduce the stockpiles signed in the 80s. After lengthy negotiations, a new START treaty was signed in 2010.

Confrontation with Russia (or China for that matter) is of course BAD/MAD.
Anyone with brain gets that.

But, North Korea could be seen totally opposite.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

Any chance of skipping "virtue signalling" in analyzing this possibility?
Americans that is. I do get that most of the rest here either don't care of would actually like it. Nuke on US that is. More the merrier.

What I actually don't get is Kim's regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.
They are going way above the self-defense level in this game, IMHO.
Some believe they are just Chinese pawn in game with Trump administration. I am not so sure about it. Such regimes do get delusional and detached from reality.
US administration/deep state also aren't quite attached to reality.
And nukes.
That combination just ........feels bad.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

The Norks are hostile to the U.S. the same way that the deer are hostile to the wolves.

Is it the case now that SALT is completely dead and the only nuclear shootout deterrent is the old reliable M.A.D.?

I think you're referring to START, not SALT. SALT were arms limitation treaties (i.e. limiting growth) in the 70s. START was a treaty to reduce the stockpiles signed in the 80s. After lengthy negotiations, a new START treaty was signed in 2010.

Hi-ho silviosilver,

Thanks a lot for the intervention, update on SALT!

Some here (perhaps especially geokat62) will be interested in Rep. Trent Franks’ peculiar intervention, a guy who in 2013 made his obligatory pledge to AIPAC.

Linked below is an article on how Trent Franks and Rep. Doug Lamborn teamed up in favor of junking of the “new” START.

Some here (perhaps especially geokat62) will be interested in Rep. Trent Franks’ peculiar intervention, a guy who in 2013 made his obligatory pledge to AIPAC.

And what a pledge, Chuck. What more proof is required to know that Capitol Hill is indeed Knesset West?

Just watch this 10 min video of the congressman from Arizona read a speech that was undoubtedly written by AIPAC. Although it was delivered by an American congressman, this could have been delivered by the Israeli ambassador to the UN. But the delivery was more potent as it came from someone with an American accent, not an Israeli one.

Another nice reality based article by Phil Girardi.
A reasonable presumption in any discussion about nuclear preparedness is that nuclear war is an unthinkable disaster for the combatants and the rest of the world, except perhaps for the rats and the cockroaches.
Designing a policy around a critical belief taken in isolation from every thing else that we have the capability of neutralizing (whatever in actuality that means) 97% of incoming missiles, itself a ludicrous claim, is the stuff out of which dystopian movie scripts are written. Fancy in Hollywood, madness in Washington.
If the M/I complex is so 97% adept at M/I undertakings, how come its track record since 1945 is 3% adept and 97% failure except when Reagan, Gorbechev, and John Paul II managed to conclude Cold War I by ignoring the considered advice of their respective complex experts; alas, only to see Cold War II ignited by the damn fool experts who refused to take for an answer a reasonable peace based on mutual respect for national sovereignty.
97% success probability my ass!

Chuck, was reading of that closer to the time, and it was interesting,

Please also reading the article at the link I posted.

I like insects, excepting mosquitos and horseflies, moths if they are wantimg to eat clothes, never killing other types, hornets and wasps only if they are trying to set up near my home, also never small spiders (arachnids, not insects, yeah I know), they are seeming to eat small cockroaches throughout summer, they are welcome, between the small population of small spiders and the cockroach traps I place, not seeing many roaches! Never using insecticide.

And yet, as a kid, I was anything but concerned about them. In fact, I used to “worry” (not really, but sorta) that the chance to use them would pass, and that the peaceniks would take over and that would be the end of the free world.

Okay that was silly and scary, but it’s the sort of thing a kid can be forgiven for.

But how the hell can you forgive some fully grown adult sons of bitches who think nuking a country is some legitimate way to settle a dispute with it? It doth boggle the mind.

Some here (perhaps especially geokat62) will be interested in Rep. Trent Franks' peculiar intervention, a guy who in 2013 made his obligatory pledge to AIPAC.

Linked below is an article on how Trent Franks and Rep. Doug Lamborn teamed up in favor of junking of the "new" START.

(Sigh) Wonder if Trent is related to General Tommy Franks?

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/dont-junk-new-start/

Selah The Lobby Doomsday Hobby.

Some here (perhaps especially geokat62) will be interested in Rep. Trent Franks’ peculiar intervention, a guy who in 2013 made his obligatory pledge to AIPAC.

And what a pledge, Chuck. What more proof is required to know that Capitol Hill is indeed Knesset West?

Just watch this 10 min video of the congressman from Arizona read a speech that was undoubtedly written by AIPAC. Although it was delivered by an American congressman, this could have been delivered by the Israeli ambassador to the UN. But the delivery was more potent as it came from someone with an American accent, not an Israeli one.

Before making this comment, I read Andrei Martyanov's narrow minded complaint that Israel doesn't have a naval nuclear deterrent. (SIGH) Tell that one to the survivor's of Israel's barbaric attack on the U.S.S. Liberty?

At any rate, thanks for posting Rep. Trent Franks' sad abandonment of his oath sworn U.S. principles.

Suppose I can say with confidence:

1. In defiance of international attempts to make the M.E. a nuke weapon free zone,
The Lobby makes sure that Israel can have nuclear weapons & can laugh at the
"dead ender" signators of the N.P.T.

2. Dumb Goyim Americans must continue to finance Israel's "defense" despite their
breaking the N.P.T. deal and are constantly looking to get their wars.

3. Planet Earth suffers a daily (24/7) existential threat because bribed Congressmen are
trained to "run on" winnable nuke warfare and they are happy with an Israeli
finger-on-the (stalled) START-trigger.

I'd guess that the interceptor missiles that are actually fielded are secretly equipped with nuclear warheads themselves, so this makes it a lot easier to hit the target. Still, if the only thing able to discourage the President from nuking the Norks is the threat of them nuking us back, it's a sign that he's fallen under neocon domination.

Russian nukes can withstand a full blast 500 meters away and still hit their target.

George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM treaty with Russia right after 9/11. What had seemed like common sense once, a treaty to end the race to shoot down the missiles that are trying to shoot down the missiles that the other guys launched to shoot down the missiles that were launched first and on, and on and on – was defeated soundly. The question of whether or not something works is mostly irrelevant, but is used to obscure larger mechanisms by distilling an “issue” into a comfortably familiar form the public can think about.

The US did a lot of research in the 50s and 60s – eating themselves a nibble at a time from their own assholes until the realization that military keynesianism might end up killing themselves. But by the 1980s, conservative revisionists were starting to rewrite Vietnam, rewrite nuclear war, massively increase defense spending and create a new reality about how winning is not only possible but must be pursued to achieve our “political goals”. It’s hard to believe that they believe any of this rot at all, there’s no intention to actually use THAAD. It’s purpose was spending, testing success with ribbons, and then installations.

Am I the only one having trouble seeing through the propaganda to understand the situation in North Korea? If they are wacko bird and horrible bad guys, then Trump may be right and Tillerson is wasting his time.

On the other hand, my suspicion is that this is our creation, we’re still fighting a decades old proxy war for some reason, and all we really need to do is get our boot off their throat. If this is the case, and it costs us Seattle, then we need to call the American experiment done.

Let’s pretend the author is wrong, star wars works (reagan sits up in his grave and gives a fist pump) and we successfully kill a couple million North Koreans. Problem solved, right? Aside from the sin of it (hard to put aside), I think the aftermath will call in a lot of accounts Americans will be ashamed to pay.

The bigger lie here - seriously - is that there are 'nuclear weapons' at all. If you look at the evidence, it's clear that 'nuclear weapons' as a whole were fake from the beginning, with multiple proofs now that, e.g., Hiroshima was a chemical fire-bombing war crime, just like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Dresden, Hamburg.

The political context for the nuclear weapons scam after Hiroshima, was the USA-Moscow deal in Stalin's later years, that Stalin would pretend to be a 'nuclear weapons power' too, riches & tech would be passed on to Soviet elites (as Antony Sutton, 'Best Enemy Money Can Buy' proved was happening); and the world would be in fear of 'nuclear terror' supporting big-power domination of the earth & trillions of profits for oligarchs via 'weapons industries'.

Swedish nuclear engineer Anders Björkman, once asked to investigate 'nuclear weapons' for Sweden, has been showing in detail for years that nuclear weapons are impossible, fake, & have never existed (versus nuclear power, which does work). From a recent overview of why Hiroshima was not a 'nuclear' or 'atomic bomb' explosion:
http://www.newnationalist.net/2017/08/01/was-hiroshima-firebombed-and-not-nuked/

- The area destroyed in Hiroshima, was only one-fourth the size of the area destroyed in Tokyo fire-bombing with identical devastation

- US military Major Alexander de Seversky, surveying Japanese cities shortly afterwards, found wooden-house-burned Hiroshima to show no signs at all of anything other than chemical fire-bombing, just like Tokyo, Yokohama & Osaka ... central iron-steel buildings were intact, fragile objects undamaged, even flag poles still up beneath 'ground zero' ... no spot where things had been 'vapourised'

- The 'smoking gun' proving Hiroshima was fake, is in 1945 US military records, logging 66 aeroplanes as 'chemically fire-bombing Imabari, Japan', close to Hiroshima, at the same date & hour as the alleged 'atomic bomb' ... Imabari which no longer existed, having been totally destroyed in 2 previous fire-bombing raids ... this was the fleet that fire-bombed Hiroshima

- Photographs of Hiroshima smoke look exactly like columns of smoke from chemical fire-bombing, confirmed by Japanese witnesses who eventually did speak ... in general, the 'mushroom clouds' eventually marketed as the 'nuclear weapon signature', are also from certain types of chemical explosions, as recently exploding Chinese factories have shown

- A 1990 medical study, completing 40 years of investigation of Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors, showed no genetic damage, as is typical of those exposed to too-high radiation

Recently, there has been a move to wind down the nuclear weapons hoax, with this year's 'UN resolution to ban & destroy all nuclear weapons' ... a 'great favour' the coming one-world globalist government will do for us, putting the nuclear weapons hoax to rest. They can claim to dis-assemble all the nuclear weapons like South Africa claimed to do in the past

But over 72 years, all 10 alleged 'nuclear bomb nations' have played along, in what has been a global scam, trillions for oligarchs owning armaments industries, the 'nuclear weapons' scam a major tool for the big and medium powers who are allowed to claim to have them ... Consider the history:

1960 - France chafes not to be 2nd class to Brits - FRANCE & DE GAULLE HAVE THE BOMB

1964 - China upgraded to major league - COMMIE CHINA HAS THE BOMB

1966 - Israel joins the club in time to terrorise & blackmail Arabs in 1967 & 1973 wars - JEWS HAVE THE BOMB & JEWS ARE READY TO SAMSON OPTION EVERYBODY, later 'confirmed' by Mordechai Vanunu to MI6 London Times & then maybe living on Haifa beach, not 'in Israeli prison', like 'not really in Ecuador Embassy' Julian Assange

1979 - South Africa's white apartheid gov gets to play - WHITE RACIST SOUTH AFRICA HAS THE BOMB READY TO KILL BLACK PEOPLE ... but 'dismantles bombs' before Mandela & black government can find out the scam

1998 - Pakistan becomes central player in new Western anti-Muslim theme - PAKISTANI MUSLIMS HAVE THE BOMB & OSAMA OR TERRORISTS MIGHT GET AHOLD OF IT

2006 - North Korea, always making deals, gets to upgrade - CRAZY NORTH KOREA HAS THE BOMB

The flaw in Mr Giraldi’s argument is that it postulates that there is a country somewhere out there that is willing and able to launch a nuclear first strike on the US. Not North Korea. Their nuclear “programme” depends, at very least, on rocket motors bought in from or via Russia. Every time they fire off a missile, they have to import a new motor and build a new rocket! Russia? Why would it launch a nuclear attack on anyone? If it did, what would be its target and what would be the military value of that target? Trying to cow Americans into submission by a shock attack is the mistake the Japanese made at Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, Russia is far more vulnerable to attack than North Korea. Its long northern coast is just across the Arctic from North America and most of its natural resources are close to that coastline, as is its only ice-free port with access to the open sea. Without ever needing to use nuclear weapons, the US could cripple Russia’s economy very easily. Given Russia’s elongated shape, simultaneous attacks from all sides would force Russia to split up its air defences without being able to shift them around quickly in reaction to an incoming attack. Russia is a tailor-made target for a conventional air war and in the modern world, he who controls the airspace over the battlefield wins the war! Thus, I read Mr Giraldi’s article as the usual nuclear scaremongering, “the beauty of Putin’s weapons”, so to speak! Sounds like the spooks are back to defending their Russian “asset”!

Michael Kenny,
You are daft at best. Needing a little more studying;!

At the Pearl Harbour attack, Yamamato (who had opposed it) was expecting to sink a few carriers.

The carriers based there were all in or near what is now the northern Pacific garbage gyre, where ships almost never sail (also why the garbage is the relatively new thing, ships are not normally going there, so noticing the garbage in the gyre is recent). For no explicable reason, except that …

The attack was lured by Rozenfeldt, it was a ruse on his part to ‘GODAWAW’!

Day of Deceit, a book by a USA citizen, is to covering background quite well.

Peter, you seem to be suggesting that most commenters here hate the US enough to want it to suffer a nuclear attack, is that correct? I would say that the opposite is true and that most Unz commenters actually love the US but do hate the fact that a small clique has taken control and have led the US into needless conflicts that do threaten the US, both militarily, economically and socially.

Peter, you seem to be suggesting that most commenters here hate the US enough to want it to suffer a

nuclear attack, is that correct?

Not quite.

I am suggesting that a lot of commenters from non-Western sphere wouldn’t mind US suffering a nuclear attack.

Like: what goes around comes around, carma, payback, reverse racism and stuff like that.
No, I am not going to trawl the posts and “prove” the case.

Now, I have a question for you:Do you think that most of commenters here, regardless of place of birth/residence, wouldn’t mind Israel suffering a nuclear attack?

They chose to join that club by stealing the technology from us. The idea of nukes being used against those not pursuing or possessing nukes is a non starter worldwide, short of Israelis calling for the use of nukes against Iran. In short, whatever happens to Israel in the future, the blame can be placed squarely on the Israelis and their behavior.

I would argue, similar to Henry Kissinger, that the behavior of those people towards others necessarily means someone will eventually kick their ass one way or another. And if not, they will certainly keep trying. Look at history, people who go around killing innocent children, lying, stealing, conniving, stabbing their "allies" or shall I say hostages in the back all the while smiling at them saying it ain't so. Starting wars using deception, subterfuge and obfuscation with other people's children as the muscle for their activities without any notion of right and wrong.

What, given sufficient time, do you expect will happen to a group that conducts themselves in that manner? What if we truly decided to put America first? If they have 80 nukes, why should we shell out so much of our taxpayer cash to help fund their apartheid terror state? Why should we allow them to commandeer so much of our government and foreign policy establishment? Have we given up on the idea of independence in this country?

There may be some here who would like to see Israel nuked but I doubt that it would be most of those here. I would say that most of the Unz readers and commenters would like to see Israel stop meddling in US affairs, stop receiving any aid from the US taxpayers and cease to be the main belligerent in the ME, especially to the degree that the US becomes involved.

What I actually don’t get is Kim’s regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.

No, this is not. They are a hell of a lot more reasonable than the US. Kim agreed to the proposal by Russian and China to suspend his program if the US stops it military "exercises". The US says the NK should stop the tests first before the Americans even think about talking to them. Obviously, this is not going to happen. Particularly considering that an agreement of that sort was concluded once in the past, but the US broke it almost immediately.

You see, North Korea is not at all delusional and knows full well that the US is not to be trusted and never sticks to any agreement it signs up to. Iran is a good case in point. So, they are understandably apprehensive, given their history with the US, about giving up their nukes.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

I think it'd be much more accurate to say that it is the US that is hostile to the NK regime, not the other way around. As to hitting it, are you sure the US would be permitted to hit anything so close to the China and Russia territories without retaliation? I don't think so. I think Washington knows that, too.

Well….

Kim agreed to the proposal by Russian and China to suspend his program if the US stops it military “exercises”.

You see, North Korea is not at all delusional and knows full well that the US is not to be trusted and never sticks to any agreement it signs up to. Iran is a good case in point. So, they are understandably apprehensive, given their history with the US, about giving up their nukes.

Agree.
You are mixing two things.
Giving up nukes and developing LONG RANGE nuclear capability.
I’ll use analogy for clarification: you apply for a gun permit for self-defense (not necessarily in US so don’t get stuck on 2nd Amendment). And you want to buy .50 cal sniper rifle, not a handgun/shotgun.

As to hitting it, are you sure the US would be permitted to hit anything so close to the China and Russia territories without retaliation? I don’t think so. I think Washington knows that, too.

No.
Nobody would be posting here if that was the case.
We all know very well it can happen.
If US NCA feels the threat is real, it WILL act.
What happens after that…well…that’s what science-fiction is all about isn’t it (hint: The Day After)?

There is also South Korea. Try to imagine the fallout among Koreans (and Japanese, Chinese, other Asians) if their cousins are nuked. In the short run it might even work - if it would be an extremely targeted attack. But there is also longer run and for decades US would not be able to live this down. Generations of Koreans would grow up bitter that it was deemed ok to nuke people like them. War propaganda tends to wear off and only angry emotional memories remain.

And the Europeans, they would be apoplectic, probably the end of their American infatuation.

So the downside is potentially enormous. My guess is that fat Kim and his crew just want to be left alone. And they are scared. What's the point is stirring up a wasp nest? Now just imagine Chinese reaction if somebody drops a nuke on their border. It wouldn't be pretty.

Reasonable reasons……

IMHO, as far as US Administration is concerned, mean nothing….NOTHING….compared to a nuclear attack on US mainland (or Hawaii for that matter).
Simple.

Kim regime does not appear reasonable.
The assassination of his half brother shows it.
His own dealings with those within regime who cross him show that too.

That type of person/that type of regime in possession of LONG RANGE nuclear weapons is not a good idea.

Appearances are created for you, I am not sure these 'appearances' reflect reality in N Korea. They might, but we are also being manipulated. Since I am not familiar with N Korea, my sanity check is to compare 'media appearances' of things I know well to actual reality. And there one can see huge media created gaps.

I agree that US government is capable of seeing the longterm impact on Koreans as 'nothing'. That's a problem, some core sanity principles have been discarded in Washington. My point is that any nuclear usage would have huge long-term consequences, it could start unraveling the magical spell that 'America' has had for about 100 years on the rest of mankind. But they still might do it. Remember that these actions are never clear-cut - there would be endless doubts about whether N Korea was actually going to - or was capable - of attacking Hawaii. There is no way you can win that in the long run. Koreans are after all a very-tightly related and very ethnically aware nation. And the difference between North and South Koreans is largely political - they are the same people.

North Korea has a hostile super power's troops sitting on it's border. That super power is located on the other side of the world from North Korea. That super power sends armed heavy bombers and naval flotillas right up to North Korea's borders. But North Korea is unreasonable in wanting to be able to defend itself?

The US should bring all it's troops home from Asia and leave Asia to the Asians. Heck, let Australia police the South China Sea if it must be done. But it is not the responsibility of the American tax payer.

Most people are unaware that Israel holds a “Damocles sword” over the world. Any attack (perceived or real) on Israel will be met with a nuclear device being detonated in a city of Israel’s choosing. Israel calls this the “Samson option” and is very real.

Israel refuses to abide by IAEA guidelines concerning its nukes as its nukes are already distributed around the world. Israel cannot produce all of them as most of them are not in Israel, proper. No delivery systems are needed as Israel’s nukes are already “in place”. Look for another “false flag” operation with the blame being put on Iran. You can bet that some Iranian passports will be found in the rubble.

Most people are unaware that Israel holds a “Damocles sword” over the world. Any attack (perceived or real) on Israel will be met with a nuclear device being detonated in a city of Israel’s choosing. Israel calls this the “Samson option” and is very real.

There are some serious issues with this whole concept, even if one considers Jericho-III ICBMs. If somebody of real capability really-really needed to wipe Israel off the map, this could have been done even without any launch of ICBMs at Israel. In fact, that almost happened in 1973. In terms of counter-force suppression of Israel's deterrent, well--that is a very interesting issue. More generally, Israel doesn't hold "Damocles Sword" over the world and she knows it damn well--she miscalculates, say using her weapons first, there will be glass parking lot left from Israel. Size matters, so does capability--Israel doesn't have naval nuclear deterrent and that matters a huge deal and that is what makes Israel tremendously vulnerable but also well put on the notice that she will not (not may) survive own stupidity. Appearances and realities do not always go together.

How did those Israeli nukes get "in place"? How are the Israelis able to store and maintain nuclear weapons on foreign soil without them being discovered and disabled? Are all the nukes in the Israeli embassies?

Most people are unaware that Israel holds a “Damocles sword” over the world. Any attack (perceived or real) on Israel will be met with a nuclear device being detonated in a city of Israel’s choosing. Israel calls this the “Samson option” and is very real.

Clearly Israel is the most dangerous country in the world. It openly threatens all of humanity with a nuke Armageddon. No other nation does this. Surely the Jews are the most unstable tribal state on the planet. They have been at war with their neighbors from day one of their existence. Their treatment of the Palestinians is inhuman.

The entire world must peaceably put sanctions on Israel to eliminate all their weapons of mass destruction. (Nuke, chemical, biological, other.)

This must happen NOW!

That is a MUST step for the possibility of peace in the ME. Without the WMD threat, the Jews would have to settle on peaceable terms with their neighbors.

Did the hype of Star Wars in 1980's persuade Soviet Union that they could not keep up with the US? Is it possible that the hype about the missile defense has similar objective at least in some minds in Pentagon? But Russians do not seem to be buying it this time. Putin on several occasions said that they will improve their attack capabilities and will overwhelm any defensive measures. So there is no reason to think that anything has changed about the MAD doctrine.

I can't imagine any scenario between Russia and the US of limited nuclear exchange. It would escalate quickly to the full blown all the way attack on both sides if a limited exchange was ever attempted. And Russia has more reason to go all the way first as it is surrounded by American bases and it is at significant disadvantage in conventional forces.

Maybe the motivation has never changed.

The Magic Pudding
Why is the US government still pouring billions into missile defence?

…. The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing. You wouldn’t know it if you read the press releases published by the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency: the word “success” features more often than any other noun(2)….

Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it would bankrupt the country, just as the arms race helped to bring the Soviet Union down. By spending a couple of billion dollars on decoy technologies, Russia would commit the US to trillions of dollars of counter-measures. The cost ratios are such that even Iran could outspend the United States…..

… Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries which give millions in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding which won’t run out however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work….

If we seek to understand US foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government’s interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at key stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.

"The government’s interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at key stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders." -- hyperbola

The purpose of a nuclear deterrent is to deter attacks by your opponent. If one is ever forced to use one’s nuclear deterrent, one has already lost.

The purpose of a missile defense system is to subvert you opponent’s nuclear deterrence and deprive it of its psychological ability to deter. If U.S. politicians and generals believe they are safe behind their missile shield, they can act more aggressively. The same result can be achieved by dismissing the opponent’s deterrence as non-working or non-existent. If your opponent cannot demonstrate its capabilities by nuclear tests of missile launches, then their deterrence is as good as nothing.

It seems like a reasonable thesis to me. As I recall, there was criticism of the Patriot missile system that it was not as effective as first claimed when it came to knocking out Scuds launched by Iraq (which fly far more slowly than ICBMs).

I'm not so sure that the N. Koreans would scoff at the idea of missile defense though. Back in the Cold War days the Soviets were concerned enough about the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") that its implementation was considered by some to heighten, not lessen, the risk of nuclear war, since missile defense meant one side might feel encouraged to launch a first strike if it felt it confident in its ability to fend off a return volley. It's probably safe to say the Soviets knew more about ICBM technology than N. Korea (but that was over 30 years ago, so maybe not), so if they didn't think the idea of missile defense was baloney, I would not be so quick to write it off.

The PATRIOT system had a bug related to time keeping and floating-point representation which made it progressively less accurate the longer it had been turned on.

A lot of those old military computers were quite primitive given that they had to use Mil-Spec components in their construction. The machines did not have built-in floating point so all the arithmetic used scaled integers. The size of the registers was not large compared to today as well.

This really isn't a bug, it is the result of having numbers with a low precision (only 2**24 total possible represented values) and no realistic floating point limiting what algorithms could be utilized.

When I first got a job at Hughes in 82 after working at Burroughs, I was amazed at how seemingly backward the computers inside missiles and aircraft cockpit systems were.

General Keane sits on the Board of Directors of a company called General Dynamics. I believe Michael Scheuer has suggested former Pentagon officials, generals etc. should be forbidden from taking employment at the many defence contractors once they retire. The US, especially with its advantageous geography, is a real anomaly in the West with its elevated defence spending.

Most people are unaware that Israel holds a “Damocles sword” over the world. Any attack (perceived or real) on Israel will be met with a nuclear device being detonated in a city of Israel’s choosing. Israel calls this the “Samson option” and is very real.

Israel refuses to abide by IAEA guidelines concerning its nukes as its nukes are already distributed around the world. Israel cannot produce all of them as most of them are not in Israel, proper. No delivery systems are needed as Israel’s nukes are already “in place”. Look for another “false flag” operation with the blame being put on Iran. You can bet that some Iranian passports will be found in the rubble.

Most people are unaware that Israel holds a “Damocles sword” over the world. Any attack (perceived or real) on Israel will be met with a nuclear device being detonated in a city of Israel’s choosing. Israel calls this the “Samson option” and is very real.

There are some serious issues with this whole concept, even if one considers Jericho-III ICBMs. If somebody of real capability really-really needed to wipe Israel off the map, this could have been done even without any launch of ICBMs at Israel. In fact, that almost happened in 1973. In terms of counter-force suppression of Israel’s deterrent, well–that is a very interesting issue. More generally, Israel doesn’t hold “Damocles Sword” over the world and she knows it damn well–she miscalculates, say using her weapons first, there will be glass parking lot left from Israel. Size matters, so does capability–Israel doesn’t have naval nuclear deterrent and that matters a huge deal and that is what makes Israel tremendously vulnerable but also well put on the notice that she will not (not may) survive own stupidity. Appearances and realities do not always go together.

More generally, Israel doesn’t hold “Damocles Sword” over the world and she knows it damn well–she miscalculates, say using her weapons first, there will be glass parking lot left from Israel. Size matters, so does capability–Israel doesn’t have naval nuclear deterrent and that matters a huge deal and that is what makes Israel tremendously vulnerable but also well put on the notice that she will not (not may) survive own stupidity.

They do not claim they will survive. They claim that you go when if they must go:

And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
In 2003, a military historian, Martin van Creveld, thought that the Al-Aqsa Intifada then in progress threatened Israel’s existence.[30] Van Creveld was quoted in David Hirst’s The Gun and the Olive Branch (2003) as saying:

We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.[31]

However, it was unlikely Israel could have even targeted Europe as according to Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaakov, who was the mastermind behind the “Samson Option”, Israel did not yet have other measures like bombs or missiles to carry the nuclear payload.

Israel doesn’t have naval nuclear deterrent

Deterrent or not deterred Israel has excellent German submarines and it is safe to assume they all have nuclear capability. Another three submarines ($1 billion per sub) were approved by Germany 10/23/2017:

Germany approves deal on three submarines for Israel
http://www.dw.com/en/germany-approves-deal-on-three-submarines-for-israel/a-41075804

But the real danger is that it is the American people that is being fooled by the Administration.

When it comes to the “danger” of the government fooling the American people, you’re being a bit over-generous. As the most uninformed people on the face of the earth, Americans stay fooled and in a permanent state of ignorance and confusion. If presented with a world map and asked to do so, a full ninety percent of Americans couldn’t find North Korea on the world map is their lives depended on it.

To me, the biggest threat that a North Korean attack could pose would be EMP. All they'd have to do is get a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere somewhere above or off the west coast of the US. Setting off that would destroy much of the electronics upon which our 'Communications Age' relies upon with an EMP wave.

And that seems hard, or at least harder to stop. It does not require accuracy on the part of the North Korean missile(s). And it only requires that one such warhead get through the missile defenses. With a bit of subterfuge, it could possibly be disquised as yet another missile test, one that would obviously not be aimed at the US mainland, but falling short, before it explodes high in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, but close enough that the EMP wave has a direct path to much of the US. I suspect that many military electronics are hardened against this, as the effect has been known for quite some time. But the consumer electronics upon which our society relies would not be. Picture for instance every cell-phone/smart-phone going dead. And that's just one effect.

And it seems to be a big ask to ask missile defense to stop that. Especially when in controlled test after controlled test, when the 'defenders' know exactly what missiles will be launched, when they will be launched, and all the information about their trajectory, the missile defense still seems to be a 'hit-or-miss' proposition.

Which is why we should be negotiating. Although, the main problem with that is why the North Koreans would negotiate considering the US didn't keep its word in the 2005 agreement and is currently in the process of teaching Iran that the word of the US isn't worth the toilet paper an agreement is written upon.

To me, the biggest threat that a North Korean attack could pose would be EMP. All they’d have to do is get a nuclear warhead into the atmosphere somewhere above or off the west coast of the US.

Actually it is harder than that. They would have to have a warhead large enough to produce the EMP pulse strong enough to damage the electronics. Then they have to hit the right spot to target the area they want to damage. Too high and the EMP pulse won’t be strong enough too low and it won’t have the range needed to do the damage.

Plus any equipment not under load will probably be unaffected by the EMP. The EMP threat is greatly overblown.

Most people are unaware that Israel holds a “Damocles sword” over the world. Any attack (perceived or real) on Israel will be met with a nuclear device being detonated in a city of Israel’s choosing. Israel calls this the “Samson option” and is very real.

There are some serious issues with this whole concept, even if one considers Jericho-III ICBMs. If somebody of real capability really-really needed to wipe Israel off the map, this could have been done even without any launch of ICBMs at Israel. In fact, that almost happened in 1973. In terms of counter-force suppression of Israel's deterrent, well--that is a very interesting issue. More generally, Israel doesn't hold "Damocles Sword" over the world and she knows it damn well--she miscalculates, say using her weapons first, there will be glass parking lot left from Israel. Size matters, so does capability--Israel doesn't have naval nuclear deterrent and that matters a huge deal and that is what makes Israel tremendously vulnerable but also well put on the notice that she will not (not may) survive own stupidity. Appearances and realities do not always go together.

More generally, Israel doesn’t hold “Damocles Sword” over the world and she knows it damn well–she miscalculates, say using her weapons first, there will be glass parking lot left from Israel. Size matters, so does capability–Israel doesn’t have naval nuclear deterrent and that matters a huge deal and that is what makes Israel tremendously vulnerable but also well put on the notice that she will not (not may) survive own stupidity.

They do not claim they will survive. They claim that you go when if they must go:

And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
In 2003, a military historian, Martin van Creveld, thought that the Al-Aqsa Intifada then in progress threatened Israel’s existence.[30] Van Creveld was quoted in David Hirst’s The Gun and the Olive Branch (2003) as saying:

We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.[31]

However, it was unlikely Israel could have even targeted Europe as according to Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaakov, who was the mastermind behind the “Samson Option”, Israel did not yet have other measures like bombs or missiles to carry the nuclear payload.

Israel doesn’t have naval nuclear deterrent

Deterrent or not deterred Israel has excellent German submarines and it is safe to assume they all have nuclear capability. Another three submarines ($1 billion per sub) were approved by Germany 10/23/2017:

Deterrent or not deterred Israel has excellent German submarines and it is safe to assume they all have nuclear capability

They have nuclear capability (allegedly) from the cruise missiles those Dolphin-class subs are capable of carrying. Having said all that, all of them will never be simultaneously on the patrol since all equipment requires maintenance and repair, hence what is known as Coefficient Of Operational Tension (Strain). Out of those 5 Dolphins only 2 are AIP subs. This is one point--that is the issue of ASW. But here is point two:

They do not claim they will survive. They claim that you go when if they must go:

This is ever present issue of completely removing a conventional dynamics of escalation to a nuclear threshold from discussion. One doesn't have to make Israel "go", whatever the definition of this is. Anything prior to the actual decision to deploy nuclear deterrent is conventionally controlled. Those who control escalation--control the war. Just a simple scenario from the top of my head--an application of incremental conventional pain.

1. Sink one of the Dolphins. Shoot down several Israeli aircraft. Take an operational pause. Observe political fallout in Israel. Will Israel cross the nuclear threshold? I doubt it really.

2. Message "missed" after pp.1--another Dolphin goes down, another couple of aircraft gets shot down. Pause, observe. Any intent of crossing the threshold? The only threshold Israel will cross will be that of the US Congress (and the White House) with hysterical appeals to a sugar-daddy to save their asses.

3. Israeli military posturing is well-known, as is their gross boastfulness, which, as an example, poisoned US military thinking for decades. It is expected from people in those lands, it is a part of the culture--to be overly dramatic.

In the end, for a man in the noose, one doesn't have to kick the chair from under his feet to convince him that he is subdued, enough to strain the rope. This is just one of many non-nuclear violent means which can make Israel do what is needed (if shit really hits the fan), without Israel "perceiving" herself to about "go down". Truth is, Israel real security guarantees are not in Israel proper, they are in the Beltway. I am not talking, of course, about the fact--and that is purely technological issue not to be discussed here--of capability to render Israel's deterrent generally ineffective. How--is a completely different issue. Israeli's generally are good, but they are not THAT good. They know it. Hence hysteria and BiBi visiting Putin regularly. While I may have some reservations about people in D.C. I know that those who deal with situation in Moscow know Israel's capabilities extremely well.

There is also South Korea. Try to imagine the fallout among Koreans (and Japanese, Chinese, other Asians) if their cousins are nuked. In the short run it might even work - if it would be an extremely targeted attack. But there is also longer run and for decades US would not be able to live this down. Generations of Koreans would grow up bitter that it was deemed ok to nuke people like them. War propaganda tends to wear off and only angry emotional memories remain.

And the Europeans, they would be apoplectic, probably the end of their American infatuation.

So the downside is potentially enormous. My guess is that fat Kim and his crew just want to be left alone. And they are scared. What's the point is stirring up a wasp nest? Now just imagine Chinese reaction if somebody drops a nuke on their border. It wouldn't be pretty.

Well, the japanese don’t seem to hate us too much. And the South Koreans would be speaking, uh, North Korean but for Uncle Sam.

IMHO, as far as US Administration is concerned, mean nothing....NOTHING....compared to a nuclear attack on US mainland (or Hawaii for that matter).
Simple.

Kim regime does not appear reasonable.
The assassination of his half brother shows it.
His own dealings with those within regime who cross him show that too.

That type of person/that type of regime in possession of LONG RANGE nuclear weapons is not a good idea.

“Kim regime does not appear reasonable”

Appearances are created for you, I am not sure these ‘appearances’ reflect reality in N Korea. They might, but we are also being manipulated. Since I am not familiar with N Korea, my sanity check is to compare ‘media appearances’ of things I know well to actual reality. And there one can see huge media created gaps.

I agree that US government is capable of seeing the longterm impact on Koreans as ‘nothing’. That’s a problem, some core sanity principles have been discarded in Washington. My point is that any nuclear usage would have huge long-term consequences, it could start unraveling the magical spell that ‘America’ has had for about 100 years on the rest of mankind. But they still might do it. Remember that these actions are never clear-cut – there would be endless doubts about whether N Korea was actually going to – or was capable – of attacking Hawaii. There is no way you can win that in the long run. Koreans are after all a very-tightly related and very ethnically aware nation. And the difference between North and South Koreans is largely political – they are the same people.

Appearances are created for you, I am not sure these ‘appearances’ reflect reality in N Korea. They might, but we are also being manipulated. Since I am not familiar with N Korea, my sanity check is to compare ‘media appearances’ of things I know well to actual reality. And there one can see huge media created gaps.

Well....I am a simple man.This is how it looks from a perspective of that simpleton:North Korea has legitimate reason to fear regime change, even invasion by US and its allies.The regime in North Korea, in that case, faces "Saddam/Milosevic/Qaddafi" fate. Not pleasant.So, the regime wants a good deterrent.The only deterrent, so far, apparently, is a nuclear weapon.So, having a nuclear weapon just makes sense.Simple self-defense capability against a superpower.

What makes sense for me is having a SHORT RANGE nuclear capability. On strategic/operational level a KT yield and able to reach to, say, semicircle up to Busan.

Developing ICBMs with MT yield capable of reaching mainland US does not make sense in that, self-defense scenario.Threatening the superpower just does not make sense.Feels as unnecessary provocation.As .....irrational.

2. The only important is: no US administration will balance "long-term consequences" and short term (literal) fallout on U.S. soil.NCA won't care for that "spell" for one microsecond.We can like it or not, but, they will pulverize any possible threat coming from North Korea regardless of any consequence.Actually, the only consequence they'd be concerned about is MAD with Russia. Not even with China.Draw your own conclusions.

Mine are, and my point is: if North Korean regime keeps sending a message of will and capability to deliver a nuke on Hawaii, let alone mainland we are for some fireworks in Korean peninsula.Maybe wider.

But, fear not.A combination of willing and knowable public and competent and responsible politicians in modern democracies will prevent all that.No need to be worried.....no need to be worried...no...need...to......

Bibi and his people feel pretty safe with Iron Dome and ABMs but he also has a Yuuge Wall that everyone who is “respectable” says is IMPOSSIBLE for US. Americans should be more like me, and by that I mean WHITE PEOPLE. I operate on Enlightened Self Interest. Is it GOOD for Me and Mine. Do I care about Israel.? Actually NO. That covenant was broken when Babylon crushed the errant Israelites that turned away from God before the Flood. The Talmud is named for Babylon, the Original Evil Empire.
The threat of Pancho Villa is here Today, in the cheap labor fantasies pushed by Ayn Rand Cultists. I want none of that. Go below the Rio Grande to get that profit and keep those products THERE. We do not NEED this fake world delusion called “globalism”. You are bringing Death to your door. Death doesn’t knock once.

More generally, Israel doesn’t hold “Damocles Sword” over the world and she knows it damn well–she miscalculates, say using her weapons first, there will be glass parking lot left from Israel. Size matters, so does capability–Israel doesn’t have naval nuclear deterrent and that matters a huge deal and that is what makes Israel tremendously vulnerable but also well put on the notice that she will not (not may) survive own stupidity.

They do not claim they will survive. They claim that you go when if they must go:

And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
In 2003, a military historian, Martin van Creveld, thought that the Al-Aqsa Intifada then in progress threatened Israel’s existence.[30] Van Creveld was quoted in David Hirst’s The Gun and the Olive Branch (2003) as saying:

We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.[31]

However, it was unlikely Israel could have even targeted Europe as according to Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaakov, who was the mastermind behind the “Samson Option”, Israel did not yet have other measures like bombs or missiles to carry the nuclear payload.

Israel doesn’t have naval nuclear deterrent

Deterrent or not deterred Israel has excellent German submarines and it is safe to assume they all have nuclear capability. Another three submarines ($1 billion per sub) were approved by Germany 10/23/2017:

Germany approves deal on three submarines for Israel
http://www.dw.com/en/germany-approves-deal-on-three-submarines-for-israel/a-41075804

Deterrent or not deterred Israel has excellent German submarines and it is safe to assume they all have nuclear capability

They have nuclear capability (allegedly) from the cruise missiles those Dolphin-class subs are capable of carrying. Having said all that, all of them will never be simultaneously on the patrol since all equipment requires maintenance and repair, hence what is known as Coefficient Of Operational Tension (Strain). Out of those 5 Dolphins only 2 are AIP subs. This is one point–that is the issue of ASW. But here is point two:

They do not claim they will survive. They claim that you go when if they must go:

This is ever present issue of completely removing a conventional dynamics of escalation to a nuclear threshold from discussion. One doesn’t have to make Israel “go”, whatever the definition of this is. Anything prior to the actual decision to deploy nuclear deterrent is conventionally controlled. Those who control escalation–control the war. Just a simple scenario from the top of my head–an application of incremental conventional pain.

1. Sink one of the Dolphins. Shoot down several Israeli aircraft. Take an operational pause. Observe political fallout in Israel. Will Israel cross the nuclear threshold? I doubt it really.

2. Message “missed” after pp.1–another Dolphin goes down, another couple of aircraft gets shot down. Pause, observe. Any intent of crossing the threshold? The only threshold Israel will cross will be that of the US Congress (and the White House) with hysterical appeals to a sugar-daddy to save their asses.

3. Israeli military posturing is well-known, as is their gross boastfulness, which, as an example, poisoned US military thinking for decades. It is expected from people in those lands, it is a part of the culture–to be overly dramatic.

In the end, for a man in the noose, one doesn’t have to kick the chair from under his feet to convince him that he is subdued, enough to strain the rope. This is just one of many non-nuclear violent means which can make Israel do what is needed (if shit really hits the fan), without Israel “perceiving” herself to about “go down”. Truth is, Israel real security guarantees are not in Israel proper, they are in the Beltway. I am not talking, of course, about the fact–and that is purely technological issue not to be discussed here–of capability to render Israel’s deterrent generally ineffective. How–is a completely different issue. Israeli’s generally are good, but they are not THAT good. They know it. Hence hysteria and BiBi visiting Putin regularly. While I may have some reservations about people in D.C. I know that those who deal with situation in Moscow know Israel’s capabilities extremely well.

I find myself agreeing with your premise that Israel wouldn't go immediately from 0 to nuclear on first provocation, and incremental provocation may well be a viable way to observe their reaction to determine when they start preparation for nukes. This, of course assumes a sane government in Israel, and recent events would belie that assumption.

Another point - while your premise holds for large scale nuclear weaponry, I don't believe that it applies for tactical nukes, which some claim that Saudi Arabia has already deployed in Yemen with Israeli help. Some of the videos showing mushroom clouds from explosions would tend to support that speculation.

” Far better to take the North Korean threat seriously and admit that a west coast city like Seattle could well become the target of a successful nuclear weapon attack.>>>>>>

Isn’t that what Trump and Co. and the Walking Dead Neocons have been doing all along…fear mongering?…I think so.

The myth of missile defense aside I don’t know that I even buy that this N Korea hysteria is even about their nukes.
Reading reports in international papers it may be more about the fact that Russia has been actively investing in North Korea to secure a key strategic economic outlet to the Pacific Ocean. And on top of that Russia is acting as the political and business intermediary between China. Japan and the loud mouth in N Korea in this 3 sided squabble.

So all this crap about N Korea actually lobbing a nuke on the US reminds me of the WMD propaganda to justify invading Iraq.
It may be and probably is more about the US foiling Russian expansion of influence and commerce in that part of Asia.

There is a lot of hot air about South Korea being willing to destroy North Korea. I have spent a fair amount of time in Seoul over the years, and one thing that people may not realize is that many South Koreans have families and relatives in North Korea. They are not about to bomb them.

Appearances are created for you, I am not sure these 'appearances' reflect reality in N Korea. They might, but we are also being manipulated. Since I am not familiar with N Korea, my sanity check is to compare 'media appearances' of things I know well to actual reality. And there one can see huge media created gaps.

I agree that US government is capable of seeing the longterm impact on Koreans as 'nothing'. That's a problem, some core sanity principles have been discarded in Washington. My point is that any nuclear usage would have huge long-term consequences, it could start unraveling the magical spell that 'America' has had for about 100 years on the rest of mankind. But they still might do it. Remember that these actions are never clear-cut - there would be endless doubts about whether N Korea was actually going to - or was capable - of attacking Hawaii. There is no way you can win that in the long run. Koreans are after all a very-tightly related and very ethnically aware nation. And the difference between North and South Koreans is largely political - they are the same people.

Appearances are created for you, I am not sure these ‘appearances’ reflect reality in N Korea. They might, but we are also being manipulated. Since I am not familiar with N Korea, my sanity check is to compare ‘media appearances’ of things I know well to actual reality. And there one can see huge media created gaps.

Well….I am a simple man.
This is how it looks from a perspective of that simpleton:
North Korea has legitimate reason to fear regime change, even invasion by US and its allies.
The regime in North Korea, in that case, faces “Saddam/Milosevic/Qaddafi” fate. Not pleasant.
So, the regime wants a good deterrent.
The only deterrent, so far, apparently, is a nuclear weapon.
So, having a nuclear weapon just makes sense.
Simple self-defense capability against a superpower.

What makes sense for me is having a SHORT RANGE nuclear capability.
On strategic/operational level a KT yield and able to reach to, say, semicircle up to Busan.

Developing ICBMs with MT yield capable of reaching mainland US does not make sense in that, self-defense scenario.
Threatening the superpower just does not make sense.
Feels as unnecessary provocation.
As …..irrational.

Why should the US fear to attack N Korea when it is impossible for them to strike the US. The US invaded, destroyed, and murdered the leaders of most of those countries you listed with impunity. They could do so precisely because those countries possessed no weapons capable of striking the US.

Without long range capability there is no retaliatory capability and therefore no deterrent. I'm sure even a "simple man" as you put it can grasp that.

Confrontation with Russia (or China for that matter) is of course BAD/MAD.
Anyone with brain gets that.

But, North Korea could be seen totally opposite.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

Any chance of skipping "virtue signalling" in analyzing this possibility?
Americans that is. I do get that most of the rest here either don't care of would actually like it. Nuke on US that is. More the merrier.

What I actually don't get is Kim's regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.
They are going way above the self-defense level in this game, IMHO.
Some believe they are just Chinese pawn in game with Trump administration. I am not so sure about it. Such regimes do get delusional and detached from reality.
US administration/deep state also aren't quite attached to reality.
And nukes.
That combination just ........feels bad.

As usual, you are completely full of shit… but then, anyone with, er, half a brain, can see you are merely a virulent little war mongering Internet troll, always asking for some more war, from the comfort of whatever little insect hole you type your garbage. It reminds me of what another poster wrote around here:
‘Amerikastan,
Amerikastan,
Wants to fight Russia and China,
Iran and North Korea,
Can’t even beat,
The Taliban*.’

IMHO, as far as US Administration is concerned, mean nothing....NOTHING....compared to a nuclear attack on US mainland (or Hawaii for that matter).
Simple.

Kim regime does not appear reasonable.
The assassination of his half brother shows it.
His own dealings with those within regime who cross him show that too.

That type of person/that type of regime in possession of LONG RANGE nuclear weapons is not a good idea.

North Korea has a hostile super power’s troops sitting on it’s border. That super power is located on the other side of the world from North Korea. That super power sends armed heavy bombers and naval flotillas right up to North Korea’s borders. But North Korea is unreasonable in wanting to be able to defend itself?

The US should bring all it’s troops home from Asia and leave Asia to the Asians. Heck, let Australia police the South China Sea if it must be done. But it is not the responsibility of the American tax payer.

Appearances are created for you, I am not sure these 'appearances' reflect reality in N Korea. They might, but we are also being manipulated. Since I am not familiar with N Korea, my sanity check is to compare 'media appearances' of things I know well to actual reality. And there one can see huge media created gaps.

I agree that US government is capable of seeing the longterm impact on Koreans as 'nothing'. That's a problem, some core sanity principles have been discarded in Washington. My point is that any nuclear usage would have huge long-term consequences, it could start unraveling the magical spell that 'America' has had for about 100 years on the rest of mankind. But they still might do it. Remember that these actions are never clear-cut - there would be endless doubts about whether N Korea was actually going to - or was capable - of attacking Hawaii. There is no way you can win that in the long run. Koreans are after all a very-tightly related and very ethnically aware nation. And the difference between North and South Koreans is largely political - they are the same people.

Clicked “Publish” early….

My point is that any nuclear usage would have huge long-term consequences, it could start unraveling the magical spell that ‘America’ has had for about 100 years on the rest of mankind.

2. The only important is: no US administration will balance “long-term consequences” and short term (literal) fallout on U.S. soil.
NCA won’t care for that “spell” for one microsecond.
We can like it or not, but, they will pulverize any possible threat coming from North Korea regardless of any consequence.
Actually, the only consequence they’d be concerned about is MAD with Russia. Not even with China.
Draw your own conclusions.

Mine are, and my point is: if North Korean regime keeps sending a message of will and capability to deliver a nuke on Hawaii, let alone mainland we are for some fireworks in Korean peninsula.
Maybe wider.

But, fear not.
A combination of willing and knowable public and competent and responsible politicians in modern democracies will prevent all that.
No need to be worried…..no need to be worried…no…need…to……

N Korea simply wants to be left alone. Sending a message of 'will and capability' is not how they think. They are sending a message of 'if you corner me, I will hurt you, even if we both die'. They are also not going to start anything. If they are pre-emptively attacked, what happens next is anyone's guess. But it could be catastrophic.

My point is that apart from the likely catastrophe, if we survive, there would also be a long-term negative consequence for Washington in terms of very bad vibes for generations in that part of the world. Actually, probably all over the world. That is a risk even more unhinged warmongers in Washington might not want to take. But, hey if their rationality is as low as you think, they just might. They might as well nuke Soul for all the emotional anger that would release among the Koreans.

Did the hype of Star Wars in 1980's persuade Soviet Union that they could not keep up with the US? Is it possible that the hype about the missile defense has similar objective at least in some minds in Pentagon? But Russians do not seem to be buying it this time. Putin on several occasions said that they will improve their attack capabilities and will overwhelm any defensive measures. So there is no reason to think that anything has changed about the MAD doctrine.

I can't imagine any scenario between Russia and the US of limited nuclear exchange. It would escalate quickly to the full blown all the way attack on both sides if a limited exchange was ever attempted. And Russia has more reason to go all the way first as it is surrounded by American bases and it is at significant disadvantage in conventional forces.

there are actual retards right here in the comments that thinks usa can win a nuclear war and only be set back a few decades of progress :((( apparently a country with 250 nukes is not a concern.

the moment a nuclear launch is confirmed by any of the nuclear powers, we can expect nuclear winter. I fully agree that there is no such thing as limited nuclear war.

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) — China proposed “double suspension” to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.
“As a first step, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises,…”
FM Wang, ‘the lips’, undoubtedly transmitted an authorized message from North Korea: “The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it.”

North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach that will eventually be able to reach the United States.

North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large yearly maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. The maneuvers have large negative impacts on North Korea’s economy.

North Korea justifies its nuclear program as the economically optimal way to respond to these maneuvers.[...]

Each time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers, the North Korean conscription army (1.2 million strong) has to go into a high state of defense readiness. Large maneuvers are a classic starting point for military attacks. The U.S.-South Korean maneuvers are (intentionally) held during the planting (April/May) or harvesting (August) season for rice when North Korea needs each and every hand in its few arable areas.

To understand why North Korea fears U.S. aggressiveness consider the utter devastation caused mostly by the U.S. during the Korea War:

Well, you do have a point here.Maneuvers/harvest/mobilization.Does make sense.

What would make sense, for the regime, then, is to have a nuclear capability (as I have already pointed out several times here.....) to destroy that INVASION FORCE.Kiloton yield up to Busan semicircle range.

What makes all that..suicidal kind of bizarre...is boasting on developing a megaton yield and, obviously, working on ICBM capability.

As for the "offer" for "double suspension" -- as I have argued elsewhere in this thread and what is totally obvious on the face of it, the "offer" is really nothing but a demand that the people of the Republic of Korea be abandoned to the depraved deprivations of Kim's brainwashed Communist goons ... and for what? For the sick satisfaction of a psychopathic billionaire dictator?

As for the stuff about the Korean War destruction almost 2/3 of a century ago, it's been said many times but never better than by General William Tecumseh Sherman:

“It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.” ― William T. Sherman

Now who is it today in Korea who wants "more vengeance, more desolation".. is it the psychopathic Communist dictator of the North, Kim Jong-un, or is it the Republic of Korea's democratically elected president Moon jae-in?

South Korean President Moon Jae-in says the confrontation over North Korea's nuclear program must "absolutely be solved peacefully" and the U.S. would need South Korea's approval to take military action. Moon ... said in a nationally televised address on Tuesday local time his government "will put everything on the line to prevent another war in the Korean Peninsula."

Its not over confidence.If north korea tries something it will be hit so hard there will be no response..nothing left of north korea.If I was china and russia I would be worried about the spill over.

We are the ones who should be worried: about being held responsible for that spillover.

If the US government hits Pyongyang with even “small” tactical nuclear weapons, how will we avoid irradiating South Korea and China, which are very nearby?

What will the Chinese public demand of their government if hundreds of thousands of Chinese people in China itself are irradiated and badly damaged, at the least, by a US nuke? Would they be wrong to demand it?

If the US government hits Pyongyang with even “small” tactical nuclear weapons, how will we avoid irradiating South Korea and China, which are very nearby?

Depending on how long the radioactive debris stays aloft, how do we keep from irradiating Japan? If you look at a prevailing winds map, the winds blow west to east across the Korean peninsula and encircle Japan.

Some here (perhaps especially geokat62) will be interested in Rep. Trent Franks’ peculiar intervention, a guy who in 2013 made his obligatory pledge to AIPAC.

And what a pledge, Chuck. What more proof is required to know that Capitol Hill is indeed Knesset West?

Just watch this 10 min video of the congressman from Arizona read a speech that was undoubtedly written by AIPAC. Although it was delivered by an American congressman, this could have been delivered by the Israeli ambassador to the UN. But the delivery was more potent as it came from someone with an American accent, not an Israeli one.

Before making this comment, I read Andrei Martyanov’s narrow minded complaint that Israel doesn’t have a naval nuclear deterrent. (SIGH) Tell that one to the survivor’s of Israel’s barbaric attack on the U.S.S. Liberty?

At any rate, thanks for posting Rep. Trent Franks’ sad abandonment of his oath sworn U.S. principles.

Suppose I can say with confidence:

1. In defiance of international attempts to make the M.E. a nuke weapon free zone,
The Lobby makes sure that Israel can have nuclear weapons & can laugh at the
“dead ender” signators of the N.P.T.

2. Dumb Goyim Americans must continue to finance Israel’s “defense” despite their
breaking the N.P.T. deal and are constantly looking to get their wars.

3. Planet Earth suffers a daily (24/7) existential threat because bribed Congressmen are
trained to “run on” winnable nuke warfare and they are happy with an Israeli
finger-on-the (stalled) START-trigger.

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China proposed "double suspension" to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.
"As a first step, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises,..."
FM Wang, 'the lips', undoubtedly transmitted an authorized message from North Korea: "The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it."

North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach that will eventually be able to reach the United States.

North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large yearly maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. The maneuvers have large negative impacts on North Korea's economy.

North Korea justifies its nuclear program as the economically optimal way to respond to these maneuvers.[...]

Each time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers, the North Korean conscription army (1.2 million strong) has to go into a high state of defense readiness. Large maneuvers are a classic starting point for military attacks. The U.S.-South Korean maneuvers are (intentionally) held during the planting (April/May) or harvesting (August) season for rice when North Korea needs each and every hand in its few arable areas.

To understand why North Korea fears U.S. aggressiveness consider the utter devastation caused mostly by the U.S. during the Korea War:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/images5/MacArthur.jpg

Read it all at
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/the-reason-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-program-and-its-offer-to-end-it.html

Well, you do have a point here.
Maneuvers/harvest/mobilization.
Does make sense.

What would make sense, for the regime, then, is to have a nuclear capability (as I have already pointed out several times here…..) to destroy that INVASION FORCE.
Kiloton yield up to Busan semicircle range.

What makes all that..suicidal kind of bizarre…is boasting on developing a megaton yield and, obviously, working on ICBM capability.

Makes sense?
Or I am looking forward to another case of Internet “anger management/manners” here?

What I actually don’t get is Kim’s regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.

No, this is not. They are a hell of a lot more reasonable than the US. Kim agreed to the proposal by Russian and China to suspend his program if the US stops it military "exercises". The US says the NK should stop the tests first before the Americans even think about talking to them. Obviously, this is not going to happen. Particularly considering that an agreement of that sort was concluded once in the past, but the US broke it almost immediately.

You see, North Korea is not at all delusional and knows full well that the US is not to be trusted and never sticks to any agreement it signs up to. Iran is a good case in point. So, they are understandably apprehensive, given their history with the US, about giving up their nukes.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

I think it'd be much more accurate to say that it is the US that is hostile to the NK regime, not the other way around. As to hitting it, are you sure the US would be permitted to hit anything so close to the China and Russia territories without retaliation? I don't think so. I think Washington knows that, too.

Why would short range deter the US? If the US is the biog threat (and it is), you need to be able to counter that threat. Seems imminently reasonable. You don’t see the US scrapping its long range capability, and it has even less of a short range threat to counter.

Using your .50 caliber analogy, if your true enemy is at 500 yards and has a .50 caliber rifle, a 9mm pistol is not much for self-defense.

Again, I think the entire world agrees that the US cannot be trusted. Most are just afraid to admit it officially.

What I actually don’t get is Kim’s regime attitude.
Feels provocative bordering suicidal.

No, this is not. They are a hell of a lot more reasonable than the US. Kim agreed to the proposal by Russian and China to suspend his program if the US stops it military "exercises". The US says the NK should stop the tests first before the Americans even think about talking to them. Obviously, this is not going to happen. Particularly considering that an agreement of that sort was concluded once in the past, but the US broke it almost immediately.

You see, North Korea is not at all delusional and knows full well that the US is not to be trusted and never sticks to any agreement it signs up to. Iran is a good case in point. So, they are understandably apprehensive, given their history with the US, about giving up their nukes.

A regime hostile to US is developing ICBM capacity. Developing, not having it. YET.
So, US should hit them BEFORE they develop it.

I think it'd be much more accurate to say that it is the US that is hostile to the NK regime, not the other way around. As to hitting it, are you sure the US would be permitted to hit anything so close to the China and Russia territories without retaliation? I don't think so. I think Washington knows that, too.

Kim agreed to the proposal by Russian and China to suspend his program if the US stops it military “exercises”. — EugeneGur

The quotes around ‘exercises’ are supposed to indicate that there is something sinister and unreasonable about the military exercises, which have been conducted annually for years entirely within the boundaries of South Korea, that is, south of the 38th Parallel. Such exercises are out of rational prudence considering that North Korea did invade the South to initiate the Korean War in 1950 and continues to take an aggressive stance toward the Republic of Korea (the South).

For the Republic of Korea (the only democratically elected government on the Korean Peninsula) to agree to Kim’s demand would set a precedent yielding to Kim control over military operations in the South. On top of that, the demand made by Russia and China on behalf of Kim includes that UN/USA military withdraw from Korea before Kim would agree to start negotiations. Thus, Kim demands surrender of the sovereignty of the ROK and surrender by the UN and USA before he will begin what EugeneGur and other of Kim’s dupes or trolls ludicrously call “negotiations”.

What has been the response of the Republic of Korea to Kim’s demands that the ROK surrender its population to the deprivations of Kim’s Communist military forces? It has been to send food to the North — because they understand in Seoul that the Korean people in the North are being starved for the sake of Kim’s nuclear-bomb and ICBM program.

EugeneGur is just another propagandist who takes his talking points from Kim’s “Korean Central News Agency” — EugeneGur and those like him are pathetic dupes or even agents of the only remaining Stalinist dictatorship in the world, helping to prop it up by seeking to justify its dangerously aggressive policies as somehow sane and reasonable.

Before making this comment, I read Andrei Martyanov's narrow minded complaint that Israel doesn't have a naval nuclear deterrent. (SIGH) Tell that one to the survivor's of Israel's barbaric attack on the U.S.S. Liberty?

At any rate, thanks for posting Rep. Trent Franks' sad abandonment of his oath sworn U.S. principles.

Suppose I can say with confidence:

1. In defiance of international attempts to make the M.E. a nuke weapon free zone,
The Lobby makes sure that Israel can have nuclear weapons & can laugh at the
"dead ender" signators of the N.P.T.

2. Dumb Goyim Americans must continue to finance Israel's "defense" despite their
breaking the N.P.T. deal and are constantly looking to get their wars.

3. Planet Earth suffers a daily (24/7) existential threat because bribed Congressmen are
trained to "run on" winnable nuke warfare and they are happy with an Israeli
finger-on-the (stalled) START-trigger.

Most people are unaware that Israel holds a “Damocles sword” over the world. Any attack (perceived or real) on Israel will be met with a nuclear device being detonated in a city of Israel’s choosing. Israel calls this the “Samson option” and is very real.

Israel refuses to abide by IAEA guidelines concerning its nukes as its nukes are already distributed around the world. Israel cannot produce all of them as most of them are not in Israel, proper. No delivery systems are needed as Israel’s nukes are already “in place”. Look for another “false flag” operation with the blame being put on Iran. You can bet that some Iranian passports will be found in the rubble.

How did those Israeli nukes get “in place”? How are the Israelis able to store and maintain nuclear weapons on foreign soil without them being discovered and disabled? Are all the nukes in the Israeli embassies?

I'll bite, for no other reason than the "poor man's nuclear Armageddon" seems entirely plausible to me.

How did those Israeli nukes get “in place”?

In a standard shipping container, door to door delivery. The B/L lists the contents as: "Said to contain machine parts as follows...", then a list of Model numbers and brief description. A nuke mixed in with large steel machinery components would go unnoticed unless the authorities were looking for it specifically. Approx 40,000 20' equivalent containers are imported daily into the US. The EU is similar. Only recently have the customs authorities started using such technologies such as X-rays, primarily looking for illegal migrants. No idea if X-rays would expose a well-shielded nuclear bomb, but containers are very rarely opened for inspection and most of those are cursory inspections at that. (That's quite unlike China, btw, where every inbound container is opened and the goods checked against a Commercial Invoice and the B/L).

How are the Israelis able to store and maintain nuclear weapons on foreign soil without them being discovered and disabled?

How many Israeli owned/controlled companies are there in the West? (EG:) ZIM, an Israeli co. is one of the world's largest logistics companies. (As an aside, they abruptly skipped on their lease at the WTC shortly before 9/11). How many such companies have warehouses or factories where a palletized crate could be stored indefinitely undisturbed? How many of those company's owners/employees have a garage at home, or their friends' homes? Or use a public warehouse? A very large number, I'd guess. Nukes aren't very big any more and I'm not aware of any sort of random inspection program inspecting whses, factories and private garages for nuclear weaponry. The only way it would be found out is because an intelligence operation exposed it.

Are all the nukes in the Israeli embassies?

Maybe, but I doubt it.

The one potential fly in the "nukes-in-place" soup is maintenance. I have little idea of what a maintenance program for a non-weaponized, "sleeping" nuke would look like. Would it have to be regular? How often? How extensive? Or could it be left alone and given a tune-up a few days before intended use? No idea. Certainly they'd need a lot less maintenance then the combination of a warhead and the ICBM that would carry it. If it was an IDF owned company, then regular maintenance by IDF nuclear personnel shouldn't present a problem.

If we nuked NK, I think we would become a world pariah. I am not sure though. NK says
what they want is to be accepted as a nuclear power but not have to actually fight a
nuclear war to achieve that. I don’t know who to believe about that. It seems that the US
is more belligerent than SK so maybe we should get in line behind and not ahead of SK about
this. Jeeze, what a mess.

It seems that the US is more belligerant than SK so maybe we should get in line behind and not ahead of SK about this ... -- headrick

Absolutely, headrick, that's what I have also advocated: let Seoul take the lead in dealing with the North, with Kim. I suggested that Trump could have welcomed Moon and made a statement, maybe even suggesting a Northeast Asia nuclear-free zone to include SE Russia, NE China, North Korea and all of Japan. Kim's own father, I believe, had made moves in that direction (before he died) and probably Kim's uncle, the one that Kim apparently murdered ... maybe that's why he was murdered. It all adds up to that Trump got overly emotional with Moon because he (Trump) was frustrated with Moon's desire to still try to negotiate with Kim, when a simple literal reading of Kim's demands showed that the DPRK had absolutely no intention of negotiating anything. Trump was basing his approach on the intelligence he had on the issue ... but why not let Moon try something ... without dragging Trump into it with him. Let it be reported that Trump told Moon, "You're taking the lead: if you say nuke Pyongyang, we'll nuke Pyongyang." That would strengthen Moon's bargaining position, while relieving Trump of the headache.

We are the ones who should be worried: about being held responsible for that spillover.

If the US government hits Pyongyang with even "small" tactical nuclear weapons, how will we avoid irradiating South Korea and China, which are very nearby?

What will the Chinese public demand of their government if hundreds of thousands of Chinese people in China itself are irradiated and badly damaged, at the least, by a US nuke? Would they be wrong to demand it?

If the US government hits Pyongyang with even “small” tactical nuclear weapons, how will we avoid irradiating South Korea and China, which are very nearby?

Depending on how long the radioactive debris stays aloft, how do we keep from irradiating Japan? If you look at a prevailing winds map, the winds blow west to east across the Korean peninsula and encircle Japan.

Kim agreed to the proposal by Russian and China to suspend his program if the US stops it military “exercises”. -- EugeneGur

The quotes around 'exercises' are supposed to indicate that there is something sinister and unreasonable about the military exercises, which have been conducted annually for years entirely within the boundaries of South Korea, that is, south of the 38th Parallel. Such exercises are out of rational prudence considering that North Korea did invade the South to initiate the Korean War in 1950 and continues to take an aggressive stance toward the Republic of Korea (the South).

For the Republic of Korea (the only democratically elected government on the Korean Peninsula) to agree to Kim's demand would set a precedent yielding to Kim control over military operations in the South. On top of that, the demand made by Russia and China on behalf of Kim includes that UN/USA military withdraw from Korea before Kim would agree to start negotiations. Thus, Kim demands surrender of the sovereignty of the ROK and surrender by the UN and USA before he will begin what EugeneGur and other of Kim's dupes or trolls ludicrously call "negotiations".

What has been the response of the Republic of Korea to Kim's demands that the ROK surrender its population to the deprivations of Kim's Communist military forces? It has been to send food to the North -- because they understand in Seoul that the Korean people in the North are being starved for the sake of Kim's nuclear-bomb and ICBM program.

EugeneGur is just another propagandist who takes his talking points from Kim's "Korean Central News Agency" -- EugeneGur and those like him are pathetic dupes or even agents of the only remaining Stalinist dictatorship in the world, helping to prop it up by seeking to justify its dangerously aggressive policies as somehow sane and reasonable.

So you would have no issue with the North Koreans, China, Russia or Outer Bumfreakistan running military exercises with Mexico just south of the Rio Grande?

So you would have no issue with the North Koreans, China, Russia or Outer Bumfreakistan running military exercises with Mexico just south of the Rio Grande?" Chris Mallory, to Grandpa

Chris, you manage to pack quite a few false equivalencies into your 25 words! Here's an example: Mexico is a much larger country than South Korea -- anywhere in South Korea could be taken as "just south of the Rio Grande". The area of Mexico is about 20 times that of South Korea! Plus, if you think about it, the only realistic exercises would have to be at the DMZ or at some kind of mock-up of the DMZ ... and where would you like UN/USA/ROK to construct that mock-up?

But of course, Chris, you don't think about anything at all ... you don't have to, being absolutely certain of your righteousness ... and the evil of all those who oppose your stupid POV. Very "liberal" of you!

,
BTW: “He apparently killed himself by running his car’s engine inside his suburban garage in Virginia.” It’s amazing how many such deaths have occurred near SAC bases, including SAC HQ over the years. A guy could even be forgiven for supposing that this is a standard M.O. for one or more organizations who sign off as “Air Force Secret”.

As for ChuckOrloaki’s “Cheney-W. Bush Zionist administration” — I recall back during those dark days Dubbya had his photo taken, complete with the blue-and-white yarmulke, praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

When I first read the title this morning, I was a bit taken aback. But in reading the content, I understand that it a review of the complete guessing game that is the missile defense system.

They have never scheduled a test that was not preplanned or preprogrammed.

I would bet that some of this comes from the dome analysis which is also vastly overrated. To the suggestion that a perceived defense system will deter attack, might make sense if your opponent believe it. But the dome defense did not stop Iraq during the first gulf war.

I think the only system that is viable is rooted in laser tech. I hate to even mention it, because it is going to change warfare in ways disturbing to contemplate.

Americans consequently do not know war except as something that happens elsewhere and to foreigners,

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell, isn’t it? Americans usually don’t give a hoot about dead furriners, they all look alike anyway. Notice that in all this sharpening of tension and debate regarding the DPRK no American has brought up the issue of what do the people of the ROK think about the prospect of hostilities over there. They’re on the front line and would bear the cost of any outbreak of war yet no American cares about that even though they’re supposed to be our close ally. Our ‘ally’ apparently would just be collateral damage of little interest to anyone on these shores. It’s worrying because now it appears that the DPRK is emerging as another nuclear power and wants to develop the capability to hit the US; it’s no longer a one-way street. The US never asked anyone for permission to build it’s nuclear weapons and it’s ability to act as a gatekeeper is eroding before it’s eyes, hence the hysterical rhetoric. DPRK is becoming a member of the world’s nuclear club regardless of who likes it so deal with it. There’s always Venezuela to invade. Or Niger. Oh wait, we’re already there.

…isolated by broad oceans and friendly nations to the north and south.

A French foreign ambassador expressed the same thought as follows:

“The United States was blessed among nations. On the north, she had a weak neighbor; on the south, another weak neighbor; on the east, fish; and on the west, fish.”
–Jules Jusserand, French Ambassador to the US, 1910

So you would have no issue with the North Koreans, China, Russia or Outer Bumfreakistan running military exercises with Mexico just south of the Rio Grande?

”

So you would have no issue with the North Koreans, China, Russia or Outer Bumfreakistan running military exercises with Mexico just south of the Rio Grande?” Chris Mallory, to Grandpa

Chris, you manage to pack quite a few false equivalencies into your 25 words! Here’s an example: Mexico is a much larger country than South Korea — anywhere in South Korea could be taken as “just south of the Rio Grande”. The area of Mexico is about 20 times that of South Korea! Plus, if you think about it, the only realistic exercises would have to be at the DMZ or at some kind of mock-up of the DMZ … and where would you like UN/USA/ROK to construct that mock-up?

But of course, Chris, you don’t think about anything at all … you don’t have to, being absolutely certain of your righteousness … and the evil of all those who oppose your stupid POV. Very “liberal” of you!

No "false equivalencies " at all, just your own hypocrisy. The US should not be holding any exercises in Asia. None. Nothing in Asia is any business of the US government or responsibility of the American tax payer.

Yes, I am a liberal. Our Founding Fathers were liberals, the conservatives fought for the King. And looking at modern "conservatives" why would anyone want to be one of them? What have they conserved? Our borders? Nope. The Bill of Rights? No. The traditional American population and culture? No. Marriage? Nope. I know, surely "conservatives" have conserved the Ladies Room. No you "conservatives could not even keep men from using the bathroom with our daughters.

You know what else I am Gramps? I am an American nationalist. I put the interests of the American people first. Nothing in Asia makes the cut.

Now run along Gramps and ask your nurse for more prunes at supper time.

How did those Israeli nukes get "in place"? How are the Israelis able to store and maintain nuclear weapons on foreign soil without them being discovered and disabled? Are all the nukes in the Israeli embassies?

Tens of thousands of shipping containers are exported and imported every day. Hence, getting nukes into any country is relatively easy. Of course, Israel has had decades to distribute its nukes…

'Duty, Honor, Atrocity: George W. Bush Receives a Character Award at West Point",
http://www.unz.com/article/duty-honor-atrocity/
,
BTW: "He apparently killed himself by running his car’s engine inside his suburban garage in Virginia." It's amazing how many such deaths have occurred near SAC bases, including SAC HQ over the years. A guy could even be forgiven for supposing that this is a standard M.O. for one or more organizations who sign off as "Air Force Secret".

As for ChuckOrloaki's "Cheney-W. Bush Zionist administration" -- I recall back during those dark days Dubbya had his photo taken, complete with the blue-and-white yarmulke, praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

https://www.cwporter.com/ONTHEGULFWAR.htm

Hey Grandpa Charlie,

I’d like to go to the Dimona reactor wall, and post a note asking conscientious Jews to free Mordechai Vanunu and let him speak all that he knows to our sick world.

Peter, you seem to be suggesting that most commenters here hate the US enough to want it to suffer a

nuclear attack, is that correct?

Not quite.

I am suggesting that a lot of commenters from non-Western sphere wouldn't mind US suffering a nuclear attack.

Like: what goes around comes around, carma, payback, reverse racism and stuff like that.
No, I am not going to trawl the posts and "prove" the case.

Now, I have a question for you:Do you think that most of commenters here, regardless of place of birth/residence, wouldn't mind Israel suffering a nuclear attack?

They chose to join that club by stealing the technology from us. The idea of nukes being used against those not pursuing or possessing nukes is a non starter worldwide, short of Israelis calling for the use of nukes against Iran. In short, whatever happens to Israel in the future, the blame can be placed squarely on the Israelis and their behavior.

I would argue, similar to Henry Kissinger, that the behavior of those people towards others necessarily means someone will eventually kick their ass one way or another. And if not, they will certainly keep trying. Look at history, people who go around killing innocent children, lying, stealing, conniving, stabbing their “allies” or shall I say hostages in the back all the while smiling at them saying it ain’t so. Starting wars using deception, subterfuge and obfuscation with other people’s children as the muscle for their activities without any notion of right and wrong.

What, given sufficient time, do you expect will happen to a group that conducts themselves in that manner? What if we truly decided to put America first? If they have 80 nukes, why should we shell out so much of our taxpayer cash to help fund their apartheid terror state? Why should we allow them to commandeer so much of our government and foreign policy establishment? Have we given up on the idea of independence in this country?

In short, whatever happens to Israel in the future, the blame can be placed squarely on the Israelis and their behavior.

So, "nukes" wise, I understand your reply as "it's normal to have Israel nuked sooner or later".
For "Israel/Jew haters" of course.
For "Israel firsters" of course not.

For that minority in between, just this:
Oh, BTW, Israel isn't part of article I guess, and for sure not my interest in the topic, especially in this thread. North Korea is.

Having said that, just for the record.

They chose to join that club by stealing the technology from us.

Like Soviets?

The idea of nukes being used against those not pursuing or possessing nukes is a non starter worldwide

Is it?
Can't recollect seeing any document stipulating that.
And even if I had, wouldn't put much faith there.
I just believe that a decision of deploying/or not a nuclear weapon will take into account other considerations too.

...people who go around killing innocent children...

Well, that's a strong argument when discussing realpolitics, state interests and warfare.
Emotionally loaded to the brim.
So, please, could you remind me when was the last time non-innocent children were killed in war?
Any example in human history of warfare will suffice. And we'll agree you can find plenty of examples of children being killed in war(s). Just......one.........example.

...without any notion of right and wrong....

A strong moral argument.
You probably meant "my notion of right and wrong".
I haven't seen any example in history of warfare where a party involved was not absolutely sure in morality if its cause. But, then, I could be slipping. Would you, please, point to that example? Say, from Babylon to today. Just.........one.......example.

What, given sufficient time, do you expect will happen to a group that conducts themselves in that manner?

Good point. So...why don't you. Americans I mean? What keeps you? Don't tell me you are stupid enough to buy MSM? Or just morally lazy. Are you?

Why should we allow them to commandeer so much of our government and foreign policy establishment?

Good question. Lazy..stupid..don't care? Scared?

Have we given up on the idea of independence in this country?

Don't know. Have you? Looks that way sometimes.
I could be wrong, of course.

Oh, one more thing when we are on those questions.
If it was only you, well, I don't think we'd be having this....discussion here.
The thing is, well, you guys are the hyperpower. So, you do have a tendency to, how to put it, "persuade" the rest of the world should that world feels a bit different from what you want.

The rest of the world (save Russia up to a point) can't even ask those questions.
I mean they/we can ask them but Americans answer them for us.
Often with sanctions. Sometimes with bombs.
And innocent children get killed then too.

Not the slightest chance of a war with the Koreans…..nuke or otherwise. The reason is as plain as the hook nose on your face……..nothing in it for the jooies who run Jerusalem on the Potomac. Iran is the target. We here in Ft. Meade get paid to know these things…….

'' Far better to take the North Korean threat seriously and admit that a west coast city like Seattle could well become the target of a successful nuclear weapon attack.>>>>>>

Isn't that what Trump and Co. and the Walking Dead Neocons have been doing all along...fear mongering?...I think so.

The myth of missile defense aside I don't know that I even buy that this N Korea hysteria is even about their nukes.Reading reports in international papers it may be more about the fact that Russia has been actively investing in North Korea to secure a key strategic economic outlet to the Pacific Ocean. And on top of that Russia is acting as the political and business intermediary between China. Japan and the loud mouth in N Korea in this 3 sided squabble.

So all this crap about N Korea actually lobbing a nuke on the US reminds me of the WMD propaganda to justify invading Iraq.It may be and probably is more about the US foiling Russian expansion of influence and commerce in that part of Asia.

There is a lot of hot air about South Korea being willing to destroy North Korea. I have spent a fair amount of time in Seoul over the years, and one thing that people may not realize is that many South Koreans have families and relatives in North Korea. They are not about to bomb them.

You raise an interesting point. During the UN retreat under PRC attack in the Korean War, US merchant marine were requested, not ordered, to evacuate North Korean civilians to safety from Hungnam. They evacuated 90,000+ North Korean civilians to South Korea. Those NKs have supposedly contributed 1 million citizens to South Korea. "The evacuation included 14,000 refugees who were transported on one ship, the SS Meredith Victory — the largest evacuation from land by a single ship."

2. The only important is: no US administration will balance "long-term consequences" and short term (literal) fallout on U.S. soil.NCA won't care for that "spell" for one microsecond.We can like it or not, but, they will pulverize any possible threat coming from North Korea regardless of any consequence.Actually, the only consequence they'd be concerned about is MAD with Russia. Not even with China.Draw your own conclusions.

Mine are, and my point is: if North Korean regime keeps sending a message of will and capability to deliver a nuke on Hawaii, let alone mainland we are for some fireworks in Korean peninsula.Maybe wider.

But, fear not.A combination of willing and knowable public and competent and responsible politicians in modern democracies will prevent all that.No need to be worried.....no need to be worried...no...need...to......

N Korea simply wants to be left alone. Sending a message of ‘will and capability’ is not how they think. They are sending a message of ‘if you corner me, I will hurt you, even if we both die’. They are also not going to start anything. If they are pre-emptively attacked, what happens next is anyone’s guess. But it could be catastrophic.

My point is that apart from the likely catastrophe, if we survive, there would also be a long-term negative consequence for Washington in terms of very bad vibes for generations in that part of the world. Actually, probably all over the world. That is a risk even more unhinged warmongers in Washington might not want to take. But, hey if their rationality is as low as you think, they just might. They might as well nuke Soul for all the emotional anger that would release among the Koreans.

N Korea simply wants to be left alone. Sending a message of ‘will and capability’ is not how they think. They are sending a message of ‘if you corner me, I will hurt you, even if we both die’. They are also not going to start anything.

You could be right.
What if you are wrong?

Can the U.S. President risk being wrong?
Oh, sure, we can all gloat in our "virtue signalling" here but he and his advisers can't.
"Perks" of rank.
That's the difference between "chatters" and people in high positions of power.

And, funny thing here, who cares what you/me/any of us here think we'd do or not do in that position.
The only thing that matters is what the NCA will do.
Real people there. Now. Or, say, within next couple/several months.

My point is that apart from the likely catastrophe, if we survive, there would also be a long-term negative consequence for Washington in terms of very bad vibes for generations in that part of the world. Actually, probably all over the world. That is a risk even more unhinged warmongers in Washington might not want to take.

That's the risk the U.S. leadership will definitely take, IMHO.
I believe that, should the regime in NK continue along the current path (acquiring missile nuclear capability of reaching Hawaii) we'll see either:
-leadership change there (most likely Chinese/Russian work).
- fireworks there. From the first "boom" onward all options are on the table. The best (minimal) case scenario leadership "change" with nuclear capability destroyed. The worst....well....
And plenty of options in between.

Interesting times.

When we are on the topic, since the first human killed another, probably with a rock, a weapon invented has been used...........
We like to believe nukes won't.
Based on what....faith? Not on any evidence I am afraid.
Not in our lifetime?
Hopefully.

The bigger lie here - seriously - is that there are 'nuclear weapons' at all. If you look at the evidence, it's clear that 'nuclear weapons' as a whole were fake from the beginning, with multiple proofs now that, e.g., Hiroshima was a chemical fire-bombing war crime, just like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Dresden, Hamburg.

The political context for the nuclear weapons scam after Hiroshima, was the USA-Moscow deal in Stalin's later years, that Stalin would pretend to be a 'nuclear weapons power' too, riches & tech would be passed on to Soviet elites (as Antony Sutton, 'Best Enemy Money Can Buy' proved was happening); and the world would be in fear of 'nuclear terror' supporting big-power domination of the earth & trillions of profits for oligarchs via 'weapons industries'.

Swedish nuclear engineer Anders Björkman, once asked to investigate 'nuclear weapons' for Sweden, has been showing in detail for years that nuclear weapons are impossible, fake, & have never existed (versus nuclear power, which does work). From a recent overview of why Hiroshima was not a 'nuclear' or 'atomic bomb' explosion:
http://www.newnationalist.net/2017/08/01/was-hiroshima-firebombed-and-not-nuked/

- The area destroyed in Hiroshima, was only one-fourth the size of the area destroyed in Tokyo fire-bombing with identical devastation

- US military Major Alexander de Seversky, surveying Japanese cities shortly afterwards, found wooden-house-burned Hiroshima to show no signs at all of anything other than chemical fire-bombing, just like Tokyo, Yokohama & Osaka ... central iron-steel buildings were intact, fragile objects undamaged, even flag poles still up beneath 'ground zero' ... no spot where things had been 'vapourised'

- The 'smoking gun' proving Hiroshima was fake, is in 1945 US military records, logging 66 aeroplanes as 'chemically fire-bombing Imabari, Japan', close to Hiroshima, at the same date & hour as the alleged 'atomic bomb' ... Imabari which no longer existed, having been totally destroyed in 2 previous fire-bombing raids ... this was the fleet that fire-bombed Hiroshima

- Photographs of Hiroshima smoke look exactly like columns of smoke from chemical fire-bombing, confirmed by Japanese witnesses who eventually did speak ... in general, the 'mushroom clouds' eventually marketed as the 'nuclear weapon signature', are also from certain types of chemical explosions, as recently exploding Chinese factories have shown

- A 1990 medical study, completing 40 years of investigation of Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors, showed no genetic damage, as is typical of those exposed to too-high radiation

Recently, there has been a move to wind down the nuclear weapons hoax, with this year's 'UN resolution to ban & destroy all nuclear weapons' ... a 'great favour' the coming one-world globalist government will do for us, putting the nuclear weapons hoax to rest. They can claim to dis-assemble all the nuclear weapons like South Africa claimed to do in the past

But over 72 years, all 10 alleged 'nuclear bomb nations' have played along, in what has been a global scam, trillions for oligarchs owning armaments industries, the 'nuclear weapons' scam a major tool for the big and medium powers who are allowed to claim to have them ... Consider the history:

1960 - France chafes not to be 2nd class to Brits - FRANCE & DE GAULLE HAVE THE BOMB

1964 - China upgraded to major league - COMMIE CHINA HAS THE BOMB

1966 - Israel joins the club in time to terrorise & blackmail Arabs in 1967 & 1973 wars - JEWS HAVE THE BOMB & JEWS ARE READY TO SAMSON OPTION EVERYBODY, later 'confirmed' by Mordechai Vanunu to MI6 London Times & then maybe living on Haifa beach, not 'in Israeli prison', like 'not really in Ecuador Embassy' Julian Assange

1979 - South Africa's white apartheid gov gets to play - WHITE RACIST SOUTH AFRICA HAS THE BOMB READY TO KILL BLACK PEOPLE ... but 'dismantles bombs' before Mandela & black government can find out the scam

1998 - Pakistan becomes central player in new Western anti-Muslim theme - PAKISTANI MUSLIMS HAVE THE BOMB & OSAMA OR TERRORISTS MIGHT GET AHOLD OF IT

2006 - North Korea, always making deals, gets to upgrade - CRAZY NORTH KOREA HAS THE BOMB

Relative last year on vacation met a 93 y/o man who actually witnessed the Trinity nuclear explosion in 1945. Same relative at work met the guy who designed the first H-bomb trigger: a motor driven spark gap powered by a 10mfd/10KV capacitor. No EG&G Krytron triggers there buddy. The “Starfish Prime” space H-Bomb 1.4Mt detonation on July 9, 1962 was observed in Hawaii and the electrons injected into the earths magnetic field reflected back and forth from each pole can still be detected.

Deterrent or not deterred Israel has excellent German submarines and it is safe to assume they all have nuclear capability

They have nuclear capability (allegedly) from the cruise missiles those Dolphin-class subs are capable of carrying. Having said all that, all of them will never be simultaneously on the patrol since all equipment requires maintenance and repair, hence what is known as Coefficient Of Operational Tension (Strain). Out of those 5 Dolphins only 2 are AIP subs. This is one point--that is the issue of ASW. But here is point two:

They do not claim they will survive. They claim that you go when if they must go:

This is ever present issue of completely removing a conventional dynamics of escalation to a nuclear threshold from discussion. One doesn't have to make Israel "go", whatever the definition of this is. Anything prior to the actual decision to deploy nuclear deterrent is conventionally controlled. Those who control escalation--control the war. Just a simple scenario from the top of my head--an application of incremental conventional pain.

1. Sink one of the Dolphins. Shoot down several Israeli aircraft. Take an operational pause. Observe political fallout in Israel. Will Israel cross the nuclear threshold? I doubt it really.

2. Message "missed" after pp.1--another Dolphin goes down, another couple of aircraft gets shot down. Pause, observe. Any intent of crossing the threshold? The only threshold Israel will cross will be that of the US Congress (and the White House) with hysterical appeals to a sugar-daddy to save their asses.

3. Israeli military posturing is well-known, as is their gross boastfulness, which, as an example, poisoned US military thinking for decades. It is expected from people in those lands, it is a part of the culture--to be overly dramatic.

In the end, for a man in the noose, one doesn't have to kick the chair from under his feet to convince him that he is subdued, enough to strain the rope. This is just one of many non-nuclear violent means which can make Israel do what is needed (if shit really hits the fan), without Israel "perceiving" herself to about "go down". Truth is, Israel real security guarantees are not in Israel proper, they are in the Beltway. I am not talking, of course, about the fact--and that is purely technological issue not to be discussed here--of capability to render Israel's deterrent generally ineffective. How--is a completely different issue. Israeli's generally are good, but they are not THAT good. They know it. Hence hysteria and BiBi visiting Putin regularly. While I may have some reservations about people in D.C. I know that those who deal with situation in Moscow know Israel's capabilities extremely well.

I find myself agreeing with your premise that Israel wouldn’t go immediately from 0 to nuclear on first provocation, and incremental provocation may well be a viable way to observe their reaction to determine when they start preparation for nukes. This, of course assumes a sane government in Israel, and recent events would belie that assumption.

Another point – while your premise holds for large scale nuclear weaponry, I don’t believe that it applies for tactical nukes, which some claim that Saudi Arabia has already deployed in Yemen with Israeli help. Some of the videos showing mushroom clouds from explosions would tend to support that speculation.

that Israel wouldn’t go immediately from 0 to nuclear on first provocation, and incremental provocation may well be a viable way to observe their reaction

And then, of course, there is another way to completely shut down all this Israeli boasting and Sampson options by merely positioning... wait... it has been done already (wink, wink) and the birdie brought some news on its tail that S-400 in Syria, which, accidentally, can easily cover all territory of Israel if need be, did receive and operate 40N6 with the range of 400 km and which can easily intercept ANY ICBM on its launch and accelerating phase. But, of course, coming of IOC of S-500 in 2019 can completely shut down any serious talk of "Sampson option" or any other Israel's hair brain scheme to threaten the world. After all, who would have thought that one day in 2015 Israel will wake up and find some nasty Russkies right next to its border. And who said that S-500 will not appear there too;-) Now Israel faces another terrifying (for her) prospect of Russians slowly but surely restoring their Mediterranean 5th Operational Squadron (5th OPESK), so, naturally, Bibi is forced to communicate with Putin non-stop.

Per alleged use of "tactical nukes" in Yemen--NO, this is not a tactical nuke. Not even close.

They chose to join that club by stealing the technology from us. The idea of nukes being used against those not pursuing or possessing nukes is a non starter worldwide, short of Israelis calling for the use of nukes against Iran. In short, whatever happens to Israel in the future, the blame can be placed squarely on the Israelis and their behavior.

I would argue, similar to Henry Kissinger, that the behavior of those people towards others necessarily means someone will eventually kick their ass one way or another. And if not, they will certainly keep trying. Look at history, people who go around killing innocent children, lying, stealing, conniving, stabbing their "allies" or shall I say hostages in the back all the while smiling at them saying it ain't so. Starting wars using deception, subterfuge and obfuscation with other people's children as the muscle for their activities without any notion of right and wrong.

What, given sufficient time, do you expect will happen to a group that conducts themselves in that manner? What if we truly decided to put America first? If they have 80 nukes, why should we shell out so much of our taxpayer cash to help fund their apartheid terror state? Why should we allow them to commandeer so much of our government and foreign policy establishment? Have we given up on the idea of independence in this country?

In short, whatever happens to Israel in the future, the blame can be placed squarely on the Israelis and their behavior.

So, “nukes” wise, I understand your reply as “it’s normal to have Israel nuked sooner or later”.
For “Israel/Jew haters” of course.
For “Israel firsters” of course not.

For that minority in between, just this:
Oh, BTW, Israel isn’t part of article I guess, and for sure not my interest in the topic, especially in this thread. North Korea is.

Having said that, just for the record.

They chose to join that club by stealing the technology from us.

Like Soviets?

The idea of nukes being used against those not pursuing or possessing nukes is a non starter worldwide

Is it?
Can’t recollect seeing any document stipulating that.
And even if I had, wouldn’t put much faith there.
I just believe that a decision of deploying/or not a nuclear weapon will take into account other considerations too.

…people who go around killing innocent children…

Well, that’s a strong argument when discussing realpolitics, state interests and warfare.
Emotionally loaded to the brim.
So, please, could you remind me when was the last time non-innocent children were killed in war?
Any example in human history of warfare will suffice. And we’ll agree you can find plenty of examples of children being killed in war(s). Just……one………example.

…without any notion of right and wrong….

A strong moral argument.
You probably meant “my notion of right and wrong”.
I haven’t seen any example in history of warfare where a party involved was not absolutely sure in morality if its cause. But, then, I could be slipping. Would you, please, point to that example? Say, from Babylon to today. Just………one…….example.

What, given sufficient time, do you expect will happen to a group that conducts themselves in that manner?

Good point. So…why don’t you. Americans I mean? What keeps you? Don’t tell me you are stupid enough to buy MSM? Or just morally lazy. Are you?

Why should we allow them to commandeer so much of our government and foreign policy establishment?

Good question. Lazy..stupid..don’t care? Scared?

Have we given up on the idea of independence in this country?

Don’t know. Have you? Looks that way sometimes.
I could be wrong, of course.

Oh, one more thing when we are on those questions.
If it was only you, well, I don’t think we’d be having this….discussion here.
The thing is, well, you guys are the hyperpower. So, you do have a tendency to, how to put it, “persuade” the rest of the world should that world feels a bit different from what you want.

The rest of the world (save Russia up to a point) can’t even ask those questions.
I mean they/we can ask them but Americans answer them for us.
Often with sanctions. Sometimes with bombs.
And innocent children get killed then too.

Appearances are created for you, I am not sure these ‘appearances’ reflect reality in N Korea. They might, but we are also being manipulated. Since I am not familiar with N Korea, my sanity check is to compare ‘media appearances’ of things I know well to actual reality. And there one can see huge media created gaps.

Well....I am a simple man.This is how it looks from a perspective of that simpleton:North Korea has legitimate reason to fear regime change, even invasion by US and its allies.The regime in North Korea, in that case, faces "Saddam/Milosevic/Qaddafi" fate. Not pleasant.So, the regime wants a good deterrent.The only deterrent, so far, apparently, is a nuclear weapon.So, having a nuclear weapon just makes sense.Simple self-defense capability against a superpower.

What makes sense for me is having a SHORT RANGE nuclear capability. On strategic/operational level a KT yield and able to reach to, say, semicircle up to Busan.

Developing ICBMs with MT yield capable of reaching mainland US does not make sense in that, self-defense scenario.Threatening the superpower just does not make sense.Feels as unnecessary provocation.As .....irrational.

Simple.

Deterrent indeed. As if the US cares at all about SK.

Why should the US fear to attack N Korea when it is impossible for them to strike the US. The US invaded, destroyed, and murdered the leaders of most of those countries you listed with impunity. They could do so precisely because those countries possessed no weapons capable of striking the US.

Without long range capability there is no retaliatory capability and therefore no deterrent. I’m sure even a “simple man” as you put it can grasp that.

A good point.....
You forgot, I believe, a sizable U.S. part of a possible invasion force. And, most likely with plenty of allies. Brits, Aussies.........
I am not quite sure that a cavalier attitude towards loss of life would extend to that force.

Without long range capability there is no retaliatory capability and therefore no deterrent. I’m sure even a “simple man” as you put it can grasp that.

Not quite. Grasping I mean.
I believe that a short range, say, 20 kiloton only, weapon would be quite useful there.
Say, several of those dispersed carefully somewhere in NK.
Looks as a very good deterent against invasion.
What I am missing here?

The bigger lie here - seriously - is that there are 'nuclear weapons' at all. If you look at the evidence, it's clear that 'nuclear weapons' as a whole were fake from the beginning, with multiple proofs now that, e.g., Hiroshima was a chemical fire-bombing war crime, just like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Dresden, Hamburg.

The political context for the nuclear weapons scam after Hiroshima, was the USA-Moscow deal in Stalin's later years, that Stalin would pretend to be a 'nuclear weapons power' too, riches & tech would be passed on to Soviet elites (as Antony Sutton, 'Best Enemy Money Can Buy' proved was happening); and the world would be in fear of 'nuclear terror' supporting big-power domination of the earth & trillions of profits for oligarchs via 'weapons industries'.

Swedish nuclear engineer Anders Björkman, once asked to investigate 'nuclear weapons' for Sweden, has been showing in detail for years that nuclear weapons are impossible, fake, & have never existed (versus nuclear power, which does work). From a recent overview of why Hiroshima was not a 'nuclear' or 'atomic bomb' explosion:
http://www.newnationalist.net/2017/08/01/was-hiroshima-firebombed-and-not-nuked/

- The area destroyed in Hiroshima, was only one-fourth the size of the area destroyed in Tokyo fire-bombing with identical devastation

- US military Major Alexander de Seversky, surveying Japanese cities shortly afterwards, found wooden-house-burned Hiroshima to show no signs at all of anything other than chemical fire-bombing, just like Tokyo, Yokohama & Osaka ... central iron-steel buildings were intact, fragile objects undamaged, even flag poles still up beneath 'ground zero' ... no spot where things had been 'vapourised'

- The 'smoking gun' proving Hiroshima was fake, is in 1945 US military records, logging 66 aeroplanes as 'chemically fire-bombing Imabari, Japan', close to Hiroshima, at the same date & hour as the alleged 'atomic bomb' ... Imabari which no longer existed, having been totally destroyed in 2 previous fire-bombing raids ... this was the fleet that fire-bombed Hiroshima

- Photographs of Hiroshima smoke look exactly like columns of smoke from chemical fire-bombing, confirmed by Japanese witnesses who eventually did speak ... in general, the 'mushroom clouds' eventually marketed as the 'nuclear weapon signature', are also from certain types of chemical explosions, as recently exploding Chinese factories have shown

- A 1990 medical study, completing 40 years of investigation of Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors, showed no genetic damage, as is typical of those exposed to too-high radiation

Recently, there has been a move to wind down the nuclear weapons hoax, with this year's 'UN resolution to ban & destroy all nuclear weapons' ... a 'great favour' the coming one-world globalist government will do for us, putting the nuclear weapons hoax to rest. They can claim to dis-assemble all the nuclear weapons like South Africa claimed to do in the past

But over 72 years, all 10 alleged 'nuclear bomb nations' have played along, in what has been a global scam, trillions for oligarchs owning armaments industries, the 'nuclear weapons' scam a major tool for the big and medium powers who are allowed to claim to have them ... Consider the history:

1960 - France chafes not to be 2nd class to Brits - FRANCE & DE GAULLE HAVE THE BOMB

1964 - China upgraded to major league - COMMIE CHINA HAS THE BOMB

1966 - Israel joins the club in time to terrorise & blackmail Arabs in 1967 & 1973 wars - JEWS HAVE THE BOMB & JEWS ARE READY TO SAMSON OPTION EVERYBODY, later 'confirmed' by Mordechai Vanunu to MI6 London Times & then maybe living on Haifa beach, not 'in Israeli prison', like 'not really in Ecuador Embassy' Julian Assange

1979 - South Africa's white apartheid gov gets to play - WHITE RACIST SOUTH AFRICA HAS THE BOMB READY TO KILL BLACK PEOPLE ... but 'dismantles bombs' before Mandela & black government can find out the scam

1998 - Pakistan becomes central player in new Western anti-Muslim theme - PAKISTANI MUSLIMS HAVE THE BOMB & OSAMA OR TERRORISTS MIGHT GET AHOLD OF IT

2006 - North Korea, always making deals, gets to upgrade - CRAZY NORTH KOREA HAS THE BOMB

“The bigger lie here – seriously – is that there are ‘nuclear weapons’ at all. If you look at the evidence, it’s clear that ‘nuclear weapons’ as a whole were fake from the beginning, with multiple proofs now that, e.g., Hiroshima was a chemical fire-bombing war crime, just like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Dresden, Hamburg.”

N Korea simply wants to be left alone. Sending a message of 'will and capability' is not how they think. They are sending a message of 'if you corner me, I will hurt you, even if we both die'. They are also not going to start anything. If they are pre-emptively attacked, what happens next is anyone's guess. But it could be catastrophic.

My point is that apart from the likely catastrophe, if we survive, there would also be a long-term negative consequence for Washington in terms of very bad vibes for generations in that part of the world. Actually, probably all over the world. That is a risk even more unhinged warmongers in Washington might not want to take. But, hey if their rationality is as low as you think, they just might. They might as well nuke Soul for all the emotional anger that would release among the Koreans.

N Korea simply wants to be left alone. Sending a message of ‘will and capability’ is not how they think. They are sending a message of ‘if you corner me, I will hurt you, even if we both die’. They are also not going to start anything.

You could be right.
What if you are wrong?

Can the U.S. President risk being wrong?
Oh, sure, we can all gloat in our “virtue signalling” here but he and his advisers can’t.
“Perks” of rank.
That’s the difference between “chatters” and people in high positions of power.

And, funny thing here, who cares what you/me/any of us here think we’d do or not do in that position.
The only thing that matters is what the NCA will do.
Real people there. Now. Or, say, within next couple/several months.

My point is that apart from the likely catastrophe, if we survive, there would also be a long-term negative consequence for Washington in terms of very bad vibes for generations in that part of the world. Actually, probably all over the world. That is a risk even more unhinged warmongers in Washington might not want to take.

That’s the risk the U.S. leadership will definitely take, IMHO.
I believe that, should the regime in NK continue along the current path (acquiring missile nuclear capability of reaching Hawaii) we’ll see either:
-leadership change there (most likely Chinese/Russian work).
- fireworks there. From the first “boom” onward all options are on the table. The best (minimal) case scenario leadership “change” with nuclear capability destroyed. The worst….well….
And plenty of options in between.

Interesting times.

When we are on the topic, since the first human killed another, probably with a rock, a weapon invented has been used………..
We like to believe nukes won’t.
Based on what….faith? Not on any evidence I am afraid.
Not in our lifetime?
Hopefully.

You are right that leaders don't like to risk a surprise attack. So they have a tendency to over-insure (most people in quiet, settled circumstances over-insure, because, well, what else is there to do?). This might be one of those cases where the circumstances lead us to a disaster. I hope not.

I don't "virtue signal". Virtues , like charity, only make sense in a narrow sense, in one's private life. But we need this planet for selfish reasons. Neo-cons are just the latest reincarnation of nutty, out-of-control busybodies obsessed with their own ideas and power. People like that have a cul-de-sac way of thinking. They tend to overdo it at the end and push things too far, go for that ultimate victory. Their thinking lacks boundaries. That makes them very dangerous. We are gain at one of those really dangerous moments in mankind's history, we could absent-mindedly cause a catastrophe. In a way a smaller catastrophe (like N Korea) could help us avoid a much bigger one.

Why should the US fear to attack N Korea when it is impossible for them to strike the US. The US invaded, destroyed, and murdered the leaders of most of those countries you listed with impunity. They could do so precisely because those countries possessed no weapons capable of striking the US.

Without long range capability there is no retaliatory capability and therefore no deterrent. I'm sure even a "simple man" as you put it can grasp that.

As if the US cares at all about SK

A good point…..
You forgot, I believe, a sizable U.S. part of a possible invasion force. And, most likely with plenty of allies. Brits, Aussies………
I am not quite sure that a cavalier attitude towards loss of life would extend to that force.

Without long range capability there is no retaliatory capability and therefore no deterrent. I’m sure even a “simple man” as you put it can grasp that.

Not quite. Grasping I mean.
I believe that a short range, say, 20 kiloton only, weapon would be quite useful there.
Say, several of those dispersed carefully somewhere in NK.
Looks as a very good deterent against invasion.
What I am missing here?

Detonating nukes on your own soil is not a deterrent to a hostile foreign power.

NK would be a guy with a hand grenade yelling that he'll detonate it if you shoot him. Except that in this case the shooter is a guy with a sniper rifle at 500 meters who would be pleased as punch if his target would pull the pin and save him the bullet.

If the US could make N Korea detonate their nukes on their own soil the pentagon would throw a party declare victory and go home. That's a positive outcome, not a deterrent.

Looks like PeterAUS and anonymous have decided to combine their talents to clutter-up the comment section with trivial crap no intelligent reader would bother reading. And Grandpa Charlie ain't far behind.

There is a lot of hot air about South Korea being willing to destroy North Korea. I have spent a fair amount of time in Seoul over the years, and one thing that people may not realize is that many South Koreans have families and relatives in North Korea. They are not about to bomb them.

You raise an interesting point. During the UN retreat under PRC attack in the Korean War, US merchant marine were requested, not ordered, to evacuate North Korean civilians to safety from Hungnam. They evacuated 90,000+ North Korean civilians to South Korea. Those NKs have supposedly contributed 1 million citizens to South Korea. “The evacuation included 14,000 refugees who were transported on one ship, the SS Meredith Victory — the largest evacuation from land by a single ship.”

A good point.....
You forgot, I believe, a sizable U.S. part of a possible invasion force. And, most likely with plenty of allies. Brits, Aussies.........
I am not quite sure that a cavalier attitude towards loss of life would extend to that force.

Without long range capability there is no retaliatory capability and therefore no deterrent. I’m sure even a “simple man” as you put it can grasp that.

Not quite. Grasping I mean.
I believe that a short range, say, 20 kiloton only, weapon would be quite useful there.
Say, several of those dispersed carefully somewhere in NK.
Looks as a very good deterent against invasion.
What I am missing here?

Detonating nukes on your own soil is not a deterrent to a hostile foreign power.

NK would be a guy with a hand grenade yelling that he’ll detonate it if you shoot him. Except that in this case the shooter is a guy with a sniper rifle at 500 meters who would be pleased as punch if his target would pull the pin and save him the bullet.

If the US could make N Korea detonate their nukes on their own soil the pentagon would throw a party declare victory and go home. That’s a positive outcome, not a deterrent.

If we nuked NK, I think we would become a world pariah. I am not sure though. NK says
what they want is to be accepted as a nuclear power but not have to actually fight a
nuclear war to achieve that. I don't know who to believe about that. It seems that the US
is more belligerent than SK so maybe we should get in line behind and not ahead of SK about
this. Jeeze, what a mess.

It seems that the US is more belligerant than SK so maybe we should get in line behind and not ahead of SK about this … — headrick

Absolutely, headrick, that’s what I have also advocated: let Seoul take the lead in dealing with the North, with Kim. I suggested that Trump could have welcomed Moon and made a statement, maybe even suggesting a Northeast Asia nuclear-free zone to include SE Russia, NE China, North Korea and all of Japan. Kim’s own father, I believe, had made moves in that direction (before he died) and probably Kim’s uncle, the one that Kim apparently murdered … maybe that’s why he was murdered. It all adds up to that Trump got overly emotional with Moon because he (Trump) was frustrated with Moon’s desire to still try to negotiate with Kim, when a simple literal reading of Kim’s demands showed that the DPRK had absolutely no intention of negotiating anything. Trump was basing his approach on the intelligence he had on the issue … but why not let Moon try something … without dragging Trump into it with him. Let it be reported that Trump told Moon, “You’re taking the lead: if you say nuke Pyongyang, we’ll nuke Pyongyang.” That would strengthen Moon’s bargaining position, while relieving Trump of the headache.

Actually, lots has been going on between the Russian-Chinese tag team and the two Koreas. Westerners wouldn't necessarily have heard much about it, but developments are afoot.

Largely unreported by Western corporate media, what happened in Vladivostok is really ground-breaking. Moscow and Seoul agreed on a trilateral trade platform, crucially involving Pyongyang, to ultimately invest in connectivity between the whole Korean peninsula and the Russian Far East.The rest is at http://www.atimes.com/article/russia-china-plan-north-korea-stability-connectivity/

According to reports, the N. Koreans didn't participate in the meeting, but "aren't against" the idea. Railways, ports, roads, and IT is how one draws the hermit kingdom out from its defensive shell. The US will have a hard time with this idea, so Moon will be under a lot of pressure to abandon these thoughts. Without the N. Korean bugaboo, the US has one less reason to be there, and they need all the reasons they can get. The Japanese have been eyeing this as well. They will not want to be left out.

Detonating nukes on your own soil is not a deterrent to a hostile foreign power.

NK would be a guy with a hand grenade yelling that he'll detonate it if you shoot him. Except that in this case the shooter is a guy with a sniper rifle at 500 meters who would be pleased as punch if his target would pull the pin and save him the bullet.

If the US could make N Korea detonate their nukes on their own soil the pentagon would throw a party declare victory and go home. That's a positive outcome, not a deterrent.

N Korea simply wants to be left alone. Sending a message of ‘will and capability’ is not how they think. They are sending a message of ‘if you corner me, I will hurt you, even if we both die’. They are also not going to start anything.

You could be right.
What if you are wrong?

Can the U.S. President risk being wrong?
Oh, sure, we can all gloat in our "virtue signalling" here but he and his advisers can't.
"Perks" of rank.
That's the difference between "chatters" and people in high positions of power.

And, funny thing here, who cares what you/me/any of us here think we'd do or not do in that position.
The only thing that matters is what the NCA will do.
Real people there. Now. Or, say, within next couple/several months.

My point is that apart from the likely catastrophe, if we survive, there would also be a long-term negative consequence for Washington in terms of very bad vibes for generations in that part of the world. Actually, probably all over the world. That is a risk even more unhinged warmongers in Washington might not want to take.

That's the risk the U.S. leadership will definitely take, IMHO.
I believe that, should the regime in NK continue along the current path (acquiring missile nuclear capability of reaching Hawaii) we'll see either:
-leadership change there (most likely Chinese/Russian work).
- fireworks there. From the first "boom" onward all options are on the table. The best (minimal) case scenario leadership "change" with nuclear capability destroyed. The worst....well....
And plenty of options in between.

Interesting times.

When we are on the topic, since the first human killed another, probably with a rock, a weapon invented has been used...........
We like to believe nukes won't.
Based on what....faith? Not on any evidence I am afraid.
Not in our lifetime?
Hopefully.

You are right that leaders don’t like to risk a surprise attack. So they have a tendency to over-insure (most people in quiet, settled circumstances over-insure, because, well, what else is there to do?). This might be one of those cases where the circumstances lead us to a disaster. I hope not.

I don’t “virtue signal”. Virtues , like charity, only make sense in a narrow sense, in one’s private life. But we need this planet for selfish reasons. Neo-cons are just the latest reincarnation of nutty, out-of-control busybodies obsessed with their own ideas and power. People like that have a cul-de-sac way of thinking. They tend to overdo it at the end and push things too far, go for that ultimate victory. Their thinking lacks boundaries. That makes them very dangerous. We are gain at one of those really dangerous moments in mankind’s history, we could absent-mindedly cause a catastrophe. In a way a smaller catastrophe (like N Korea) could help us avoid a much bigger one.

We are gain at one of those really dangerous moments in mankind’s history, we could absent-mindedly cause a catastrophe. In a way a smaller catastrophe (like N Korea) could help us avoid a much bigger one.

My sentiments exactly.

I remember Pershing/SS20 period in Europe.
Engaged public.
Protests, for example.
But, then, we didn't have social media and smart phones.

In this case...........pretty much nothing.
Probably too busy with friends on Facebook.

How did those Israeli nukes get "in place"? How are the Israelis able to store and maintain nuclear weapons on foreign soil without them being discovered and disabled? Are all the nukes in the Israeli embassies?

I’ll bite, for no other reason than the “poor man’s nuclear Armageddon” seems entirely plausible to me.

How did those Israeli nukes get “in place”?

In a standard shipping container, door to door delivery. The B/L lists the contents as: “Said to contain machine parts as follows…”, then a list of Model numbers and brief description. A nuke mixed in with large steel machinery components would go unnoticed unless the authorities were looking for it specifically. Approx 40,000 20′ equivalent containers are imported daily into the US. The EU is similar. Only recently have the customs authorities started using such technologies such as X-rays, primarily looking for illegal migrants. No idea if X-rays would expose a well-shielded nuclear bomb, but containers are very rarely opened for inspection and most of those are cursory inspections at that. (That’s quite unlike China, btw, where every inbound container is opened and the goods checked against a Commercial Invoice and the B/L).

How are the Israelis able to store and maintain nuclear weapons on foreign soil without them being discovered and disabled?

How many Israeli owned/controlled companies are there in the West? (EG:) ZIM, an Israeli co. is one of the world’s largest logistics companies. (As an aside, they abruptly skipped on their lease at the WTC shortly before 9/11). How many such companies have warehouses or factories where a palletized crate could be stored indefinitely undisturbed? How many of those company’s owners/employees have a garage at home, or their friends’ homes? Or use a public warehouse? A very large number, I’d guess. Nukes aren’t very big any more and I’m not aware of any sort of random inspection program inspecting whses, factories and private garages for nuclear weaponry. The only way it would be found out is because an intelligence operation exposed it.

Are all the nukes in the Israeli embassies?

Maybe, but I doubt it.

The one potential fly in the “nukes-in-place” soup is maintenance. I have little idea of what a maintenance program for a non-weaponized, “sleeping” nuke would look like. Would it have to be regular? How often? How extensive? Or could it be left alone and given a tune-up a few days before intended use? No idea. Certainly they’d need a lot less maintenance then the combination of a warhead and the ICBM that would carry it. If it was an IDF owned company, then regular maintenance by IDF nuclear personnel shouldn’t present a problem.

Apparently, the fusion booster of Tritium and Deuterium that is injected into the center of the fissile material pit of a nuclear weapon allows a higher yield of fissile material by providing up to 40% of uranium or plutonium atoms to undergo fission. For a nuclear weapon, you can double the yield of the core mass without boosting.

"One drawback to boosting is that tritium is very expensive to produce. However, boosting allows much less fissile material to be used, reducing the size and weight of the warhead, and fissile material is also very expensive. Tritium has a half life of 12.3 years so it decays 5.5% per year. This means the tritium reservoir in boosted weapons has to be replaced periodically to ensure the desired yield will be produced. "

So aging alone will reduce the yield of nuclear weapon. How that affects the reliability thermonuclear weapon insofar as it's yield is concerned is concerned is an interesting question.

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China proposed "double suspension" to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.
"As a first step, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises,..."
FM Wang, 'the lips', undoubtedly transmitted an authorized message from North Korea: "The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it."

North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach that will eventually be able to reach the United States.

North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large yearly maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. The maneuvers have large negative impacts on North Korea's economy.

North Korea justifies its nuclear program as the economically optimal way to respond to these maneuvers.[...]

Each time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers, the North Korean conscription army (1.2 million strong) has to go into a high state of defense readiness. Large maneuvers are a classic starting point for military attacks. The U.S.-South Korean maneuvers are (intentionally) held during the planting (April/May) or harvesting (August) season for rice when North Korea needs each and every hand in its few arable areas.

To understand why North Korea fears U.S. aggressiveness consider the utter devastation caused mostly by the U.S. during the Korea War:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/images5/MacArthur.jpg

Read it all at
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/the-reason-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-program-and-its-offer-to-end-it.html

As for the “offer” for “double suspension” — as I have argued elsewhere in this thread and what is totally obvious on the face of it, the “offer” is really nothing but a demand that the people of the Republic of Korea be abandoned to the depraved deprivations of Kim’s brainwashed Communist goons … and for what? For the sick satisfaction of a psychopathic billionaire dictator?

As for the stuff about the Korean War destruction almost 2/3 of a century ago, it’s been said many times but never better than by General William Tecumseh Sherman:

“It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.” ― William T. Sherman

Now who is it today in Korea who wants “more vengeance, more desolation”.. is it the psychopathic Communist dictator of the North, Kim Jong-un, or is it the Republic of Korea’s democratically elected president Moon jae-in?

South Korean President Moon Jae-in says the confrontation over North Korea’s nuclear program must “absolutely be solved peacefully” and the U.S. would need South Korea’s approval to take military action. Moon … said in a nationally televised address on Tuesday local time his government “will put everything on the line to prevent another war in the Korean Peninsula.”

The Magic Pudding
Why is the US government still pouring billions into missile defence?
http://www.monbiot.com/2008/08/19/the-magic-pudding/

.... The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing. You wouldn’t know it if you read the press releases published by the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency: the word “success” features more often than any other noun(2)....

Missile defence is so expensive and the measures required to evade it so cheap that if the US government were serious about making the system work it would bankrupt the country, just as the arms race helped to bring the Soviet Union down. By spending a couple of billion dollars on decoy technologies, Russia would commit the US to trillions of dollars of counter-measures. The cost ratios are such that even Iran could outspend the United States.....

... Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries which give millions in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding which won’t run out however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work....

If we seek to understand US foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government’s interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at key stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.

Something totally brilliant from ‘hyperbola’ –

“The government’s interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at key stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders.” — hyperbola

Peter, you seem to be suggesting that most commenters here hate the US enough to want it to suffer a

nuclear attack, is that correct?

Not quite.

I am suggesting that a lot of commenters from non-Western sphere wouldn't mind US suffering a nuclear attack.

Like: what goes around comes around, carma, payback, reverse racism and stuff like that.
No, I am not going to trawl the posts and "prove" the case.

Now, I have a question for you:Do you think that most of commenters here, regardless of place of birth/residence, wouldn't mind Israel suffering a nuclear attack?

There may be some here who would like to see Israel nuked but I doubt that it would be most of those here. I would say that most of the Unz readers and commenters would like to see Israel stop meddling in US affairs, stop receiving any aid from the US taxpayers and cease to be the main belligerent in the ME, especially to the degree that the US becomes involved.

A measured and timely warning. Although not a scientist or engineer myself, I find Mr Giraldi's logic persuasive.

I can never understand why anyone would contemplate with equanimity the prospect of a war that could - and quite probably would - kill every human being in the world, and spell the end of the human race. That must be a fascinating question to all students of the human mind.

the prospect of a war that could – and quite probably would – kill every human being in the worl

d

Don’t worry Tom. There is no chance of a nuclear war destroying every human being on earth. There have been 2000 plus atmospheric ground, sea and air bursts since 1945 and still human life expectancy (and population) is increasing. My guess, is that after a full exchange of all the nuclear weapons on earth…most of them targeted on cities and towns…there will be at least a quarter of a billion humans left after a period of mass starvation culls the approximately 4 billion survivors of the blasts.

It seems that the US is more belligerant than SK so maybe we should get in line behind and not ahead of SK about this ... -- headrick

Absolutely, headrick, that's what I have also advocated: let Seoul take the lead in dealing with the North, with Kim. I suggested that Trump could have welcomed Moon and made a statement, maybe even suggesting a Northeast Asia nuclear-free zone to include SE Russia, NE China, North Korea and all of Japan. Kim's own father, I believe, had made moves in that direction (before he died) and probably Kim's uncle, the one that Kim apparently murdered ... maybe that's why he was murdered. It all adds up to that Trump got overly emotional with Moon because he (Trump) was frustrated with Moon's desire to still try to negotiate with Kim, when a simple literal reading of Kim's demands showed that the DPRK had absolutely no intention of negotiating anything. Trump was basing his approach on the intelligence he had on the issue ... but why not let Moon try something ... without dragging Trump into it with him. Let it be reported that Trump told Moon, "You're taking the lead: if you say nuke Pyongyang, we'll nuke Pyongyang." That would strengthen Moon's bargaining position, while relieving Trump of the headache.

Actually, lots has been going on between the Russian-Chinese tag team and the two Koreas. Westerners wouldn’t necessarily have heard much about it, but developments are afoot.

According to reports, the N. Koreans didn’t participate in the meeting, but “aren’t against” the idea. Railways, ports, roads, and IT is how one draws the hermit kingdom out from its defensive shell. The US will have a hard time with this idea, so Moon will be under a lot of pressure to abandon these thoughts. Without the N. Korean bugaboo, the US has one less reason to be there, and they need all the reasons they can get. The Japanese have been eyeing this as well. They will not want to be left out.

And no doubt use that “success” to keep taxpayer money flowing for anti-ICBM defense systems.

Even if the success rate is an honest 50% that means five ICBM’s will still reach their targets if say, Kim Jong Un fired ten at the west coast. Sacremento, LA and San Fransicko would go up in mushroom clouds. Governor Moonbeam would be no more, so there’s a silver lining to everything.

I find myself agreeing with your premise that Israel wouldn't go immediately from 0 to nuclear on first provocation, and incremental provocation may well be a viable way to observe their reaction to determine when they start preparation for nukes. This, of course assumes a sane government in Israel, and recent events would belie that assumption.

Another point - while your premise holds for large scale nuclear weaponry, I don't believe that it applies for tactical nukes, which some claim that Saudi Arabia has already deployed in Yemen with Israeli help. Some of the videos showing mushroom clouds from explosions would tend to support that speculation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-FimlTyYnA

that Israel wouldn’t go immediately from 0 to nuclear on first provocation, and incremental provocation may well be a viable way to observe their reaction

And then, of course, there is another way to completely shut down all this Israeli boasting and Sampson options by merely positioning… wait… it has been done already (wink, wink) and the birdie brought some news on its tail that S-400 in Syria, which, accidentally, can easily cover all territory of Israel if need be, did receive and operate 40N6 with the range of 400 km and which can easily intercept ANY ICBM on its launch and accelerating phase. But, of course, coming of IOC of S-500 in 2019 can completely shut down any serious talk of “Sampson option” or any other Israel’s hair brain scheme to threaten the world. After all, who would have thought that one day in 2015 Israel will wake up and find some nasty Russkies right next to its border. And who said that S-500 will not appear there too;-) Now Israel faces another terrifying (for her) prospect of Russians slowly but surely restoring their Mediterranean 5th Operational Squadron (5th OPESK), so, naturally, Bibi is forced to communicate with Putin non-stop.

Per alleged use of “tactical nukes” in Yemen–NO, this is not a tactical nuke. Not even close.

You see, North Korea is not at all delusional and knows full well that the US is not to be trusted and never sticks to any agreement it signs up to. Iran is a good case in point. So, they are understandably apprehensive, given their history with the US, about giving up their nukes.

Agree.You are mixing two things.Giving up nukes and developing LONG RANGE nuclear capability.I'll use analogy for clarification: you apply for a gun permit for self-defense (not necessarily in US so don't get stuck on 2nd Amendment). And you want to buy .50 cal sniper rifle, not a handgun/shotgun.

As to hitting it, are you sure the US would be permitted to hit anything so close to the China and Russia territories without retaliation? I don’t think so. I think Washington knows that, too.

No.Nobody would be posting here if that was the case.We all know very well it can happen.If US NCA feels the threat is real, it WILL act.What happens after that...well...that's what science-fiction is all about isn't it (hint: The Day After)?

Having short range nuclear capability (to destroy invasion force) would seem more reasonable approach than threatening US mainland.

Do you think the US should eliminate all of its long range nuclear weapons?

Do you think the US should eliminate all of its long range nuclear weapons?

Of course.
Russia first, naturally.
Oh, wait ,China.
Now, when we are on the topic UK as well. Israel too (now, they could be the problem in that chain of fantasy...I mean disarmament).
France as well.
And, India and Pakistan too.

My proposal: all nuclear weapons should have a range of country border + blast radius. Something like that.....

Now.....we still have chemical and biological weapons.
Perhaps we should get rid of those too?

Now, after my own bout of crude "virtue signalling" a question for you: How could we accomplish all that?
Just post any idea.
Please.

that Israel wouldn’t go immediately from 0 to nuclear on first provocation, and incremental provocation may well be a viable way to observe their reaction

And then, of course, there is another way to completely shut down all this Israeli boasting and Sampson options by merely positioning... wait... it has been done already (wink, wink) and the birdie brought some news on its tail that S-400 in Syria, which, accidentally, can easily cover all territory of Israel if need be, did receive and operate 40N6 with the range of 400 km and which can easily intercept ANY ICBM on its launch and accelerating phase. But, of course, coming of IOC of S-500 in 2019 can completely shut down any serious talk of "Sampson option" or any other Israel's hair brain scheme to threaten the world. After all, who would have thought that one day in 2015 Israel will wake up and find some nasty Russkies right next to its border. And who said that S-500 will not appear there too;-) Now Israel faces another terrifying (for her) prospect of Russians slowly but surely restoring their Mediterranean 5th Operational Squadron (5th OPESK), so, naturally, Bibi is forced to communicate with Putin non-stop.

Per alleged use of "tactical nukes" in Yemen--NO, this is not a tactical nuke. Not even close.

I think we could benefit from you being on our side, AM, if it wasn’t for that dual loyalty thing.

There is a lot of hot air about South Korea being willing to destroy North Korea. I have spent a fair amount of time in Seoul over the years, and one thing that people may not realize is that many South Koreans have families and relatives in North Korea. They are not about to bomb them.

If the US could keep their hooked nose out of it, South and North Korea would have resolved their differences long ago.

A good point.....
You forgot, I believe, a sizable U.S. part of a possible invasion force. And, most likely with plenty of allies. Brits, Aussies.........
I am not quite sure that a cavalier attitude towards loss of life would extend to that force.

Without long range capability there is no retaliatory capability and therefore no deterrent. I’m sure even a “simple man” as you put it can grasp that.

Not quite. Grasping I mean.
I believe that a short range, say, 20 kiloton only, weapon would be quite useful there.
Say, several of those dispersed carefully somewhere in NK.
Looks as a very good deterent against invasion.
What I am missing here?

Looks like PeterAUS and anonymous have decided to combine their talents to clutter-up the comment section with trivial crap no intelligent reader would bother reading. And Grandpa Charlie ain’t far behind.

I find myself agreeing with your premise that Israel wouldn't go immediately from 0 to nuclear on first provocation, and incremental provocation may well be a viable way to observe their reaction to determine when they start preparation for nukes. This, of course assumes a sane government in Israel, and recent events would belie that assumption.

Another point - while your premise holds for large scale nuclear weaponry, I don't believe that it applies for tactical nukes, which some claim that Saudi Arabia has already deployed in Yemen with Israeli help. Some of the videos showing mushroom clouds from explosions would tend to support that speculation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-FimlTyYnA

That could be large thermobaric ordinance though – they make similar mushroom clouds.

Indeed. But we can also try to help. You're Canadian, but spread the word:
SUPPORT H.Con.Res.81 Directing the President pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Republic of Yemen.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/81/all-info

The bigger lie here - seriously - is that there are 'nuclear weapons' at all. If you look at the evidence, it's clear that 'nuclear weapons' as a whole were fake from the beginning, with multiple proofs now that, e.g., Hiroshima was a chemical fire-bombing war crime, just like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Dresden, Hamburg.

The political context for the nuclear weapons scam after Hiroshima, was the USA-Moscow deal in Stalin's later years, that Stalin would pretend to be a 'nuclear weapons power' too, riches & tech would be passed on to Soviet elites (as Antony Sutton, 'Best Enemy Money Can Buy' proved was happening); and the world would be in fear of 'nuclear terror' supporting big-power domination of the earth & trillions of profits for oligarchs via 'weapons industries'.

Swedish nuclear engineer Anders Björkman, once asked to investigate 'nuclear weapons' for Sweden, has been showing in detail for years that nuclear weapons are impossible, fake, & have never existed (versus nuclear power, which does work). From a recent overview of why Hiroshima was not a 'nuclear' or 'atomic bomb' explosion:
http://www.newnationalist.net/2017/08/01/was-hiroshima-firebombed-and-not-nuked/

- The area destroyed in Hiroshima, was only one-fourth the size of the area destroyed in Tokyo fire-bombing with identical devastation

- US military Major Alexander de Seversky, surveying Japanese cities shortly afterwards, found wooden-house-burned Hiroshima to show no signs at all of anything other than chemical fire-bombing, just like Tokyo, Yokohama & Osaka ... central iron-steel buildings were intact, fragile objects undamaged, even flag poles still up beneath 'ground zero' ... no spot where things had been 'vapourised'

- The 'smoking gun' proving Hiroshima was fake, is in 1945 US military records, logging 66 aeroplanes as 'chemically fire-bombing Imabari, Japan', close to Hiroshima, at the same date & hour as the alleged 'atomic bomb' ... Imabari which no longer existed, having been totally destroyed in 2 previous fire-bombing raids ... this was the fleet that fire-bombed Hiroshima

- Photographs of Hiroshima smoke look exactly like columns of smoke from chemical fire-bombing, confirmed by Japanese witnesses who eventually did speak ... in general, the 'mushroom clouds' eventually marketed as the 'nuclear weapon signature', are also from certain types of chemical explosions, as recently exploding Chinese factories have shown

- A 1990 medical study, completing 40 years of investigation of Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors, showed no genetic damage, as is typical of those exposed to too-high radiation

Recently, there has been a move to wind down the nuclear weapons hoax, with this year's 'UN resolution to ban & destroy all nuclear weapons' ... a 'great favour' the coming one-world globalist government will do for us, putting the nuclear weapons hoax to rest. They can claim to dis-assemble all the nuclear weapons like South Africa claimed to do in the past

But over 72 years, all 10 alleged 'nuclear bomb nations' have played along, in what has been a global scam, trillions for oligarchs owning armaments industries, the 'nuclear weapons' scam a major tool for the big and medium powers who are allowed to claim to have them ... Consider the history:

1960 - France chafes not to be 2nd class to Brits - FRANCE & DE GAULLE HAVE THE BOMB

1964 - China upgraded to major league - COMMIE CHINA HAS THE BOMB

1966 - Israel joins the club in time to terrorise & blackmail Arabs in 1967 & 1973 wars - JEWS HAVE THE BOMB & JEWS ARE READY TO SAMSON OPTION EVERYBODY, later 'confirmed' by Mordechai Vanunu to MI6 London Times & then maybe living on Haifa beach, not 'in Israeli prison', like 'not really in Ecuador Embassy' Julian Assange

1979 - South Africa's white apartheid gov gets to play - WHITE RACIST SOUTH AFRICA HAS THE BOMB READY TO KILL BLACK PEOPLE ... but 'dismantles bombs' before Mandela & black government can find out the scam

1998 - Pakistan becomes central player in new Western anti-Muslim theme - PAKISTANI MUSLIMS HAVE THE BOMB & OSAMA OR TERRORISTS MIGHT GET AHOLD OF IT

2006 - North Korea, always making deals, gets to upgrade - CRAZY NORTH KOREA HAS THE BOMB

You are right that leaders don't like to risk a surprise attack. So they have a tendency to over-insure (most people in quiet, settled circumstances over-insure, because, well, what else is there to do?). This might be one of those cases where the circumstances lead us to a disaster. I hope not.

I don't "virtue signal". Virtues , like charity, only make sense in a narrow sense, in one's private life. But we need this planet for selfish reasons. Neo-cons are just the latest reincarnation of nutty, out-of-control busybodies obsessed with their own ideas and power. People like that have a cul-de-sac way of thinking. They tend to overdo it at the end and push things too far, go for that ultimate victory. Their thinking lacks boundaries. That makes them very dangerous. We are gain at one of those really dangerous moments in mankind's history, we could absent-mindedly cause a catastrophe. In a way a smaller catastrophe (like N Korea) could help us avoid a much bigger one.

We are gain at one of those really dangerous moments in mankind’s history, we could absent-mindedly cause a catastrophe. In a way a smaller catastrophe (like N Korea) could help us avoid a much bigger one.

My sentiments exactly.

I remember Pershing/SS20 period in Europe.
Engaged public.
Protests, for example.
But, then, we didn’t have social media and smart phones.

In this case………..pretty much nothing.
Probably too busy with friends on Facebook.

So you would have no issue with the North Koreans, China, Russia or Outer Bumfreakistan running military exercises with Mexico just south of the Rio Grande?" Chris Mallory, to Grandpa

Chris, you manage to pack quite a few false equivalencies into your 25 words! Here's an example: Mexico is a much larger country than South Korea -- anywhere in South Korea could be taken as "just south of the Rio Grande". The area of Mexico is about 20 times that of South Korea! Plus, if you think about it, the only realistic exercises would have to be at the DMZ or at some kind of mock-up of the DMZ ... and where would you like UN/USA/ROK to construct that mock-up?

But of course, Chris, you don't think about anything at all ... you don't have to, being absolutely certain of your righteousness ... and the evil of all those who oppose your stupid POV. Very "liberal" of you!

No “false equivalencies ” at all, just your own hypocrisy. The US should not be holding any exercises in Asia. None. Nothing in Asia is any business of the US government or responsibility of the American tax payer.

Yes, I am a liberal. Our Founding Fathers were liberals, the conservatives fought for the King. And looking at modern “conservatives” why would anyone want to be one of them? What have they conserved? Our borders? Nope. The Bill of Rights? No. The traditional American population and culture? No. Marriage? Nope. I know, surely “conservatives” have conserved the Ladies Room. No you “conservatives could not even keep men from using the bathroom with our daughters.

You know what else I am Gramps? I am an American nationalist. I put the interests of the American people first. Nothing in Asia makes the cut.

Now run along Gramps and ask your nurse for more prunes at supper time.

Having short range nuclear capability (to destroy invasion force) would seem more reasonable approach than threatening US mainland.

Do you think the US should eliminate all of its long range nuclear weapons?

Do you think the US should eliminate all of its long range nuclear weapons?

Of course.
Russia first, naturally.
Oh, wait ,China.
Now, when we are on the topic UK as well. Israel too (now, they could be the problem in that chain of fantasy…I mean disarmament).
France as well.
And, India and Pakistan too.

My proposal: all nuclear weapons should have a range of country border + blast radius. Something like that…..

Now…..we still have chemical and biological weapons.
Perhaps we should get rid of those too?

Now, after my own bout of crude “virtue signalling” a question for you: How could we accomplish all that?
Just post any idea.
Please.

Looks like PeterAUS and anonymous have decided to combine their talents to clutter-up the comment section with trivial crap no intelligent reader would bother reading. And Grandpa Charlie ain't far behind.

it is the perfect tactic to shut the comments section down this has been charlie’s operating mode since his name first appear on this website I seriously think he is a bot.

Looks like PeterAUS and anonymous have decided to combine their talents to clutter-up the comment section with trivial crap no intelligent reader would bother reading. And Grandpa Charlie ain't far behind.

And yet I see you feel the need to pollute the thread with your own trivial crap.
Good job, keep that hypocrisy thing going.

Do you think the US should eliminate all of its long range nuclear weapons?

Of course.
Russia first, naturally.
Oh, wait ,China.
Now, when we are on the topic UK as well. Israel too (now, they could be the problem in that chain of fantasy...I mean disarmament).
France as well.
And, India and Pakistan too.

My proposal: all nuclear weapons should have a range of country border + blast radius. Something like that.....

Now.....we still have chemical and biological weapons.
Perhaps we should get rid of those too?

Now, after my own bout of crude "virtue signalling" a question for you: How could we accomplish all that?
Just post any idea.
Please.

Of course.
Russia first, naturally.

Why shouldn’t the US go first and unilaterally?

Now, after my own bout of crude “virtue signalling” a question for you: How could we accomplish all that?

- US is the _only_ nuke power that has actually used nukes to kill (murder?) ~200,000 civilians. Plausible arguments can be made whether it was militarily necessary or not, but it is a fact that US is the only country that has used nukes to kill innocent civilians. Also note that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was on US military, not civilians. And so that there is no misunderstanding: Imperial Japan was a nasty, criminal entity, enslaving, killing, murdering millions during their conquests of Korea, China, Phillippins, etc., so I shed no tears for the ~2 million Japanese military deaths and IJ's ultimate demise.

- US is one of the few countries in the world that is pretty much immune from conventional attack and/or invasion. US has never faced an existential threat from foreign enemies or invaders.Russia has been invaded and occupied several times. The most recent by Nazi Germany came perilously close to exterminating most Slavic peoples, including the bulk of the USSR. So until US/NATO stop creeping closer and closer to Russia, and stop attempting to break it apart, RF giving up its nukes would be suicidal.

If RF gives up its nukes, US/NATO will use nuke blackmail to cow RF into submission and be subject to dismemberment.

- US is the _only_ nuke power that has actually used nukes to kill (murder?) ~200,000 civilians. Plausible arguments can be made whether it was militarily necessary or not, but it is a fact that US is the only country that has used nukes to kill innocent civilians. Also note that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was on US military, not civilians. And so that there is no misunderstanding: Imperial Japan was a nasty, criminal entity, enslaving, killing, murdering millions during their conquests of Korea, China, Phillippins, etc., so I shed no tears for the ~2 million Japanese military deaths and IJ’s ultimate demise.

- US is one of the few countries in the world that is pretty much immune from conventional attack and/or invasion. US has never faced an existential threat from foreign enemies or invaders.
Russia has been invaded and occupied several times. The most recent by Nazi Germany came perilously close to exterminating most Slavic peoples, including the bulk of the USSR. So until US/NATO stop creeping closer and closer to Russia, and stop attempting to break it apart, RF giving up its nukes would be suicidal.

If RF gives up its nukes, US/NATO will use nuke blackmail to cow RF into submission and be subject to dismemberment.

US will never give up their nuclear weapons. The reason why they invented them in the first place is because they can’t fight land battles.

Russia and China can be (and are) superpowers without nuclear weapons, US is the only one that needs them in order to impersonate a “superpower”. I don’t care how good their navy and air-force are, most of the battles that mattered throughout the history were won on land.

Well...thanks for chiming in, but, the purpose of that post of mine was just to point to.....waste of time.....with such "exchanges".
To be clear, I don't much think, let alone speculate, about any military confrontation between US and Russia, save covert operations and plain errors. Errors because they can escalate.
So, any conversation about "nuclear" stuff between those two just don't interest me.

Because you put some effort and the topic itself IS interesting, my reply:
1. True but doesn't mean much. I am positive if USSR had had a nuclear weapon they would've tossed in on Berlin before crossing into Germany in WW2.
That thing abut "innocent civilians" I don't buy for a nanosecond.
Vae victis since Babylon.
Dresden?
Anyway...

2 Agree

But, that question of mine, again, was rhetorical.

Nobody expects any current nuclear power to disarm. Not important here.

What IS important is the possibility of a heavy conflict in/around Korean peninsula.

My point is that Kim's regime (and I mean him personally and probably less than 50 persons around him altogether) is, as idiot on drugs, pushing the region, and possibly the world too, into uncharted area.
I place blame for this solely on that clique.
To recap: threatening Hawaii with nuclear weapon is that irresponsible idiocy.
Developing nuclear weapons for self defense (tactical, not strategic as the clique is apparently working on) is not.
If he had kept developing tactical nukes only US would've talked a lot but not done much, IMHO.
In this ("Hawaii case") case US WILL act. From killing Kim to obliterating North Korea. And anything in between.
IMHO.
Simple as that.

As I already stated several times in this thread only.

Now, for Rusophiles here:
Imagine Georgia developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching Krasnodar. Wanting that Ossetia back. Wanting Russians out of it.
How about Chinese lovers:
Imagine Taiwan developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching Quanzhou. Demanding dismantling of all Chinese military capability in that region.
Both Georgia and Taiwan with regimes similar to the current in Pyongyang.

Looking forward for all the "reasoning" then.
Yeah.....

I suspect Kim started all this as almost a joke. An exercise in his dictatorial powers. Pure ego.
And now the joke is taking life of its own.

- US is the _only_ nuke power that has actually used nukes to kill (murder?) ~200,000 civilians. Plausible arguments can be made whether it was militarily necessary or not, but it is a fact that US is the only country that has used nukes to kill innocent civilians. Also note that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was on US military, not civilians. And so that there is no misunderstanding: Imperial Japan was a nasty, criminal entity, enslaving, killing, murdering millions during their conquests of Korea, China, Phillippins, etc., so I shed no tears for the ~2 million Japanese military deaths and IJ's ultimate demise.

- US is one of the few countries in the world that is pretty much immune from conventional attack and/or invasion. US has never faced an existential threat from foreign enemies or invaders.Russia has been invaded and occupied several times. The most recent by Nazi Germany came perilously close to exterminating most Slavic peoples, including the bulk of the USSR. So until US/NATO stop creeping closer and closer to Russia, and stop attempting to break it apart, RF giving up its nukes would be suicidal.

If RF gives up its nukes, US/NATO will use nuke blackmail to cow RF into submission and be subject to dismemberment.

US will never give up their nuclear weapons. The reason why they invented them in the first place is because they can’t fight land battles.

Russia and China can be (and are) superpowers without nuclear weapons, US is the only one that needs them in order to impersonate a “superpower”. I don’t care how good their navy and air-force are, most of the battles that mattered throughout the history were won on land.

Russia and China can be (and are) superpowers without nuclear weapons, US is the only one that needs them in order to impersonate a “superpower”.

Remind me again, how long did it take US to take out the Iraqi army, then considered the fourth most powerful in the world? 40 days? With how many casualties? Almost none?

Sure, in the end there was no clear victory because, despite all of its evils, the US was not willing to cause the amount of casualties that, say, Russia was willing to cause in Chechnya, where it killed 30% of the entire population, an act verging on, if not actually (depending on how you define the eradicated group) genocide. The US came nowhere close to wiping out 30% of Iraqis, though it easily could have.

The problem is it's virtually impossible to win a sustained war against a determined guerilla army without inflicting massive civilians casualties (again, Russia won in Chechnya, but at the cost of murdering 1/3rd of the entire population). Israel has also learned this lesson in its recent invasions of Gaza and Lebanon; Syria and Iraq in their battles against ISIS (and ISIS wasn't even particularly popular among the locals).

So do not confuse military strength with military scruples. Granted, the US' military scruples are far from what benign, but also they are not as evil as they easily could be. In open confrontation with a "state" opponent (including Yugoslavia, Syria (on minor occasions), Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan) the US victory has been quick, overwhelming and decisive. Guerilla war, on the other hand, is a whole other beast.

Some here (perhaps especially geokat62) will be interested in Rep. Trent Franks’ peculiar intervention, a guy who in 2013 made his obligatory pledge to AIPAC.

And what a pledge, Chuck. What more proof is required to know that Capitol Hill is indeed Knesset West?

Just watch this 10 min video of the congressman from Arizona read a speech that was undoubtedly written by AIPAC. Although it was delivered by an American congressman, this could have been delivered by the Israeli ambassador to the UN. But the delivery was more potent as it came from someone with an American accent, not an Israeli one.

- US is the _only_ nuke power that has actually used nukes to kill (murder?) ~200,000 civilians. Plausible arguments can be made whether it was militarily necessary or not, but it is a fact that US is the only country that has used nukes to kill innocent civilians. Also note that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was on US military, not civilians. And so that there is no misunderstanding: Imperial Japan was a nasty, criminal entity, enslaving, killing, murdering millions during their conquests of Korea, China, Phillippins, etc., so I shed no tears for the ~2 million Japanese military deaths and IJ's ultimate demise.

- US is one of the few countries in the world that is pretty much immune from conventional attack and/or invasion. US has never faced an existential threat from foreign enemies or invaders.Russia has been invaded and occupied several times. The most recent by Nazi Germany came perilously close to exterminating most Slavic peoples, including the bulk of the USSR. So until US/NATO stop creeping closer and closer to Russia, and stop attempting to break it apart, RF giving up its nukes would be suicidal.

If RF gives up its nukes, US/NATO will use nuke blackmail to cow RF into submission and be subject to dismemberment.

Well…thanks for chiming in, but, the purpose of that post of mine was just to point to…..waste of time…..with such “exchanges”.
To be clear, I don’t much think, let alone speculate, about any military confrontation between US and Russia, save covert operations and plain errors. Errors because they can escalate.
So, any conversation about “nuclear” stuff between those two just don’t interest me.

Because you put some effort and the topic itself IS interesting, my reply:
1. True but doesn’t mean much. I am positive if USSR had had a nuclear weapon they would’ve tossed in on Berlin before crossing into Germany in WW2.
That thing abut “innocent civilians” I don’t buy for a nanosecond.
Vae victis since Babylon.
Dresden?
Anyway…

2 Agree

But, that question of mine, again, was rhetorical.

Nobody expects any current nuclear power to disarm. Not important here.

What IS important is the possibility of a heavy conflict in/around Korean peninsula.

My point is that Kim’s regime (and I mean him personally and probably less than 50 persons around him altogether) is, as idiot on drugs, pushing the region, and possibly the world too, into uncharted area.
I place blame for this solely on that clique.
To recap: threatening Hawaii with nuclear weapon is that irresponsible idiocy.
Developing nuclear weapons for self defense (tactical, not strategic as the clique is apparently working on) is not.
If he had kept developing tactical nukes only US would’ve talked a lot but not done much, IMHO.
In this (“Hawaii case”) case US WILL act. From killing Kim to obliterating North Korea. And anything in between.
IMHO.
Simple as that.

As I already stated several times in this thread only.

Now, for Rusophiles here:
Imagine Georgia developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching Krasnodar. Wanting that Ossetia back. Wanting Russians out of it.
How about Chinese lovers:
Imagine Taiwan developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching Quanzhou. Demanding dismantling of all Chinese military capability in that region.
Both Georgia and Taiwan with regimes similar to the current in Pyongyang.

Looking forward for all the “reasoning” then.
Yeah…..

I suspect Kim started all this as almost a joke. An exercise in his dictatorial powers. Pure ego.
And now the joke is taking life of its own.

I'll bite, for no other reason than the "poor man's nuclear Armageddon" seems entirely plausible to me.

How did those Israeli nukes get “in place”?

In a standard shipping container, door to door delivery. The B/L lists the contents as: "Said to contain machine parts as follows...", then a list of Model numbers and brief description. A nuke mixed in with large steel machinery components would go unnoticed unless the authorities were looking for it specifically. Approx 40,000 20' equivalent containers are imported daily into the US. The EU is similar. Only recently have the customs authorities started using such technologies such as X-rays, primarily looking for illegal migrants. No idea if X-rays would expose a well-shielded nuclear bomb, but containers are very rarely opened for inspection and most of those are cursory inspections at that. (That's quite unlike China, btw, where every inbound container is opened and the goods checked against a Commercial Invoice and the B/L).

How are the Israelis able to store and maintain nuclear weapons on foreign soil without them being discovered and disabled?

How many Israeli owned/controlled companies are there in the West? (EG:) ZIM, an Israeli co. is one of the world's largest logistics companies. (As an aside, they abruptly skipped on their lease at the WTC shortly before 9/11). How many such companies have warehouses or factories where a palletized crate could be stored indefinitely undisturbed? How many of those company's owners/employees have a garage at home, or their friends' homes? Or use a public warehouse? A very large number, I'd guess. Nukes aren't very big any more and I'm not aware of any sort of random inspection program inspecting whses, factories and private garages for nuclear weaponry. The only way it would be found out is because an intelligence operation exposed it.

Are all the nukes in the Israeli embassies?

Maybe, but I doubt it.

The one potential fly in the "nukes-in-place" soup is maintenance. I have little idea of what a maintenance program for a non-weaponized, "sleeping" nuke would look like. Would it have to be regular? How often? How extensive? Or could it be left alone and given a tune-up a few days before intended use? No idea. Certainly they'd need a lot less maintenance then the combination of a warhead and the ICBM that would carry it. If it was an IDF owned company, then regular maintenance by IDF nuclear personnel shouldn't present a problem.

Apparently, the fusion booster of Tritium and Deuterium that is injected into the center of the fissile material pit of a nuclear weapon allows a higher yield of fissile material by providing up to 40% of uranium or plutonium atoms to undergo fission. For a nuclear weapon, you can double the yield of the core mass without boosting.

“One drawback to boosting is that tritium is very expensive to produce. However, boosting allows much less fissile material to be used, reducing the size and weight of the warhead, and fissile material is also very expensive. Tritium has a half life of 12.3 years so it decays 5.5% per year. This means the tritium reservoir in boosted weapons has to be replaced periodically to ensure the desired yield will be produced. ”

So aging alone will reduce the yield of nuclear weapon. How that affects the reliability thermonuclear weapon insofar as it’s yield is concerned is concerned is an interesting question.

That could be large thermobaric ordinance though - they make similar mushroom clouds.

May God help the people of Yemen.

Peace.

“May God help the people of Yemen.”

Indeed. But we can also try to help. You’re Canadian, but spread the word:SUPPORT H.Con.Res.81 Directing the President pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Republic of Yemen.

"If our missile defense systems are so hot, why haven’t the interceptors, stationed in Alaska, Japan, S. Korea and on US Navy ships in the area, shot down any of Kim’s missiles that go flying over Japan?"

1) They aren't armed.
2) They are in outer space when over Japan, so technically not a violation of Japanese airspace.
3) If we miss, the world has evidence that the Emperor has no clothing.

1) They aren’t armed.

What? Where do you get this nonsense? What is the point of having an unarmed missile defense system? I might not have full confidence in the US military but such utter stupidity I cannot swallow.

2) They are in outer space when over Japan, so technically not a violation of Japanese airspace.

But it violates UN resolutions so perfectly “legal” to shoot them down (just like the US intercepts N. Korean vessels in international waters, bans international trade, and the like).

3) If we miss, the world has evidence that the Emperor has no clothing.

US will never give up their nuclear weapons. The reason why they invented them in the first place is because they can’t fight land battles.

Russia and China can be (and are) superpowers without nuclear weapons, US is the only one that needs them in order to impersonate a “superpower”. I don’t care how good their navy and air-force are, most of the battles that mattered throughout the history were won on land.

Russia and China can be (and are) superpowers without nuclear weapons, US is the only one that needs them in order to impersonate a “superpower”.

Remind me again, how long did it take US to take out the Iraqi army, then considered the fourth most powerful in the world? 40 days? With how many casualties? Almost none?

Sure, in the end there was no clear victory because, despite all of its evils, the US was not willing to cause the amount of casualties that, say, Russia was willing to cause in Chechnya, where it killed 30% of the entire population, an act verging on, if not actually (depending on how you define the eradicated group) genocide. The US came nowhere close to wiping out 30% of Iraqis, though it easily could have.

The problem is it’s virtually impossible to win a sustained war against a determined guerilla army without inflicting massive civilians casualties (again, Russia won in Chechnya, but at the cost of murdering 1/3rd of the entire population). Israel has also learned this lesson in its recent invasions of Gaza and Lebanon; Syria and Iraq in their battles against ISIS (and ISIS wasn’t even particularly popular among the locals).

So do not confuse military strength with military scruples. Granted, the US’ military scruples are far from what benign, but also they are not as evil as they easily could be. In open confrontation with a “state” opponent (including Yugoslavia, Syria (on minor occasions), Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan) the US victory has been quick, overwhelming and decisive. Guerilla war, on the other hand, is a whole other beast.

The problem is it’s virtually impossible to win a sustained war against a determined guerilla army without inflicting massive civilians casualties (again, Russia won in Chechnya, but at the cost of murdering 1/3rd of the entire population).

Terror bombing civilians is not “fighting” and it’s not a “war” my friend. All those examples of “glorious” victories by US that you mentioned – Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia were terror bombing campaigns against mostly civilians – not wars.

Exception is perhaps the Iraq war – the beginning of it -it was fought against a regular army, but your rating of Iraq’s army is way exaggerated. By my definition for any country to be considered to have a “great army” one of the basic requirements is – that country has to produce ALL of its weapons.

Iraq didn’t make any of the weapons that they used – nor did they know how to use them properly – no disrespect here, Arabs are brave people, but bravery is not enough.

By my definition - countries that can be considered to have great armies based on the fact that they produce ALL of their weapons are: US, Russia. That’s it.

The Europeans – France, GB, Germany and also Japan are capable of producing all of their weapons, but are not doing that because they are US vassals. China is almost there.

The Russians pissed me off few years ago when they tried to buy the Mistrals from the frogs. No great power ever buys someone else's weapons.

But going back to US, even with all their weapons produced domestically, they still felt that they needed that extra boost of steroids (nuclear weapons) in order to defeat Japan, because their casualties would have been too high if they tried to invade Japan conventionally (boo-hoo).

If you can’t accept the casualties, you have no business fighting wars and pretending that you are “great power” let alone “superpower”.

Without the expense, unpredictability and complexity of a nuclear EMP blast, the entire American grid can be taken down permanently with 30-50 RPGs. Essentially, it would take little more than drive-by shootings at the 30-50 LPTs (Large Power Transformers) at strategically selected choke points on America's ancient grid to take the whole thing down. It may not even take that many. I've read that as few as 10-15 would be all that's required depending on timing and grid loading.

As an LPT takes >1.5 years to design/build, and would have to come from overseas, they would take all of 2 years to replace. 2 years without electricity would leave much of the country in chaos, so the national grid would probably never be recovered. Not to mention that 100 Fukashimas will be depending on diesel generators to keep them cooled indefinitely.

Indeed. But we can also try to help. You're Canadian, but spread the word:
SUPPORT H.Con.Res.81 Directing the President pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Republic of Yemen.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/81/all-info

Hey RobinG,

I’m actually American and live in the great state of Illinois. I will definitely forward this.

All Kim needs to do now is to invite international monitors on North Korean soil to ensure ICMB capability doesn't exist.
Or if it existed in roots it's destroyed.

Easy.

Russia/China broker the deal, Trump accepts it, no shooting starts, no ICMBs.
Inspectors keep doing their job on "no ICMB" front, mixing with the population.....
Free exchange of ideas, thoughts...information.....between local population and inspectors, of course.

If the US government hits Pyongyang with even “small” tactical nuclear weapons, how will we avoid irradiating South Korea and China, which are very nearby?

Depending on how long the radioactive debris stays aloft, how do we keep from irradiating Japan? If you look at a prevailing winds map, the winds blow west to east across the Korean peninsula and encircle Japan.

Russia and China can be (and are) superpowers without nuclear weapons, US is the only one that needs them in order to impersonate a “superpower”.

Remind me again, how long did it take US to take out the Iraqi army, then considered the fourth most powerful in the world? 40 days? With how many casualties? Almost none?

Sure, in the end there was no clear victory because, despite all of its evils, the US was not willing to cause the amount of casualties that, say, Russia was willing to cause in Chechnya, where it killed 30% of the entire population, an act verging on, if not actually (depending on how you define the eradicated group) genocide. The US came nowhere close to wiping out 30% of Iraqis, though it easily could have.

The problem is it's virtually impossible to win a sustained war against a determined guerilla army without inflicting massive civilians casualties (again, Russia won in Chechnya, but at the cost of murdering 1/3rd of the entire population). Israel has also learned this lesson in its recent invasions of Gaza and Lebanon; Syria and Iraq in their battles against ISIS (and ISIS wasn't even particularly popular among the locals).

So do not confuse military strength with military scruples. Granted, the US' military scruples are far from what benign, but also they are not as evil as they easily could be. In open confrontation with a "state" opponent (including Yugoslavia, Syria (on minor occasions), Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan) the US victory has been quick, overwhelming and decisive. Guerilla war, on the other hand, is a whole other beast.

Off topic:

The problem is it’s virtually impossible to win a sustained war against a determined guerilla army without inflicting massive civilians casualties (again, Russia won in Chechnya, but at the cost of murdering 1/3rd of the entire population).

Most people are unaware that Israel holds a “Damocles sword” over the world. Any attack (perceived or real) on Israel will be met with a nuclear device being detonated in a city of Israel’s choosing. Israel calls this the “Samson option” and is very real.

Israel refuses to abide by IAEA guidelines concerning its nukes as its nukes are already distributed around the world. Israel cannot produce all of them as most of them are not in Israel, proper. No delivery systems are needed as Israel’s nukes are already “in place”. Look for another “false flag” operation with the blame being put on Iran. You can bet that some Iranian passports will be found in the rubble.

Most people are unaware that Israel holds a “Damocles sword” over the world. Any attack (perceived or real) on Israel will be met with a nuclear device being detonated in a city of Israel’s choosing. Israel calls this the “Samson option” and is very real.

Clearly Israel is the most dangerous country in the world. It openly threatens all of humanity with a nuke Armageddon. No other nation does this. Surely the Jews are the most unstable tribal state on the planet. They have been at war with their neighbors from day one of their existence. Their treatment of the Palestinians is inhuman.

The entire world must peaceably put sanctions on Israel to eliminate all their weapons of mass destruction. (Nuke, chemical, biological, other.)

This must happen NOW!

That is a MUST step for the possibility of peace in the ME. Without the WMD threat, the Jews would have to settle on peaceable terms with their neighbors.

If I were a Korean I would be saying my prays. Trump has put a third carrier group on station near Korea. It looks like he is deadly serious about no ICBM’s with nukes on them for NKorea.

Would it be wrong to go to war over a country having nukes and the ability to use them on a ICBM? Is it moral to kill a million people over their potential possibility to do harm to us?

The likelihood that Kim would nuke America is ZERO. He knows the outcome would be a disaster for him.

Should we go to war over the ZERO probability of a war against us?

The answer is NO!

Think Peace --- Art

p.s. I have a bad feeling about this - Trump is too sure of himself.

No need to over react.

All Kim needs to do now is to invite international monitors on North Korean soil to ensure ICMB capability doesn’t exist.
Or if it existed in roots it’s destroyed.

Easy.

Russia/China broker the deal, Trump accepts it, no shooting starts, no ICMBs.
Inspectors keep doing their job on “no ICMB” front, mixing with the population…..
Free exchange of ideas, thoughts…information…..between local population and inspectors, of course.

Russia and China can be (and are) superpowers without nuclear weapons, US is the only one that needs them in order to impersonate a “superpower”.

Remind me again, how long did it take US to take out the Iraqi army, then considered the fourth most powerful in the world? 40 days? With how many casualties? Almost none?

Sure, in the end there was no clear victory because, despite all of its evils, the US was not willing to cause the amount of casualties that, say, Russia was willing to cause in Chechnya, where it killed 30% of the entire population, an act verging on, if not actually (depending on how you define the eradicated group) genocide. The US came nowhere close to wiping out 30% of Iraqis, though it easily could have.

The problem is it's virtually impossible to win a sustained war against a determined guerilla army without inflicting massive civilians casualties (again, Russia won in Chechnya, but at the cost of murdering 1/3rd of the entire population). Israel has also learned this lesson in its recent invasions of Gaza and Lebanon; Syria and Iraq in their battles against ISIS (and ISIS wasn't even particularly popular among the locals).

So do not confuse military strength with military scruples. Granted, the US' military scruples are far from what benign, but also they are not as evil as they easily could be. In open confrontation with a "state" opponent (including Yugoslavia, Syria (on minor occasions), Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan) the US victory has been quick, overwhelming and decisive. Guerilla war, on the other hand, is a whole other beast.

Terror bombing civilians is not “fighting” and it’s not a “war” my friend. All those examples of “glorious” victories by US that you mentioned – Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia were terror bombing campaigns against mostly civilians – not wars.

Exception is perhaps the Iraq war – the beginning of it -it was fought against a regular army, but your rating of Iraq’s army is way exaggerated. By my definition for any country to be considered to have a “great army” one of the basic requirements is – that country has to produce ALL of its weapons.

Iraq didn’t make any of the weapons that they used – nor did they know how to use them properly – no disrespect here, Arabs are brave people, but bravery is not enough.

By my definition – countries that can be considered to have great armies based on the fact that they produce ALL of their weapons are: US, Russia. That’s it.

The Europeans – France, GB, Germany and also Japan are capable of producing all of their weapons, but are not doing that because they are US vassals. China is almost there.

The Russians pissed me off few years ago when they tried to buy the Mistrals from the frogs. No great power ever buys someone else’s weapons.

But going back to US, even with all their weapons produced domestically, they still felt that they needed that extra boost of steroids (nuclear weapons) in order to defeat Japan, because their casualties would have been too high if they tried to invade Japan conventionally (boo-hoo).

If you can’t accept the casualties, you have no business fighting wars and pretending that you are “great power” let alone “superpower”.

Arabs can be tough as nails and very brave when they believe in what they are fighting for (backing a stupid invasion for Saddam is not very inspiring). Otherwise, they can put everyone to task for first place in the Global Coward Olympics.

{The Russians pissed me off few years ago when they tried to buy the Mistrals from the frogs.}

From what I remember (publicly available info....), Russian military was not too happy with civilian leadership forcing them to buy the 2 French Mistral ships: they said it was not suitable to Russian weather conditions. My read of it is that Moscow wanted to drive a wedge between France and US/NATO by buying military equipment from France. Certainly Russia can design and build something like the Mistral. And apparently a couple design bureaus are working on Russian versions* of Mistral. Also, if Russian military needs a helicopter-carrying assault ship, why not buy a couple very-well-designed foreign versions, use them for a while, learn its strengths/weaknesses and then design and build your own.

There is no shame in learning from others.Nazis copied the excellent T-34 in their Panther: apparently Nazi so-called 'Master Race' was not too proud to learn from, you know, 'Untermenschen'.And if I remember correctly, the excellent Soviet/Russian RPG series was built upon the German Panzerfaust.

{ No great power ever buys someone else’s weapons.}

Sometimes it's more cost effective and quicker to learn from others, and then improve.Most of China's military technology was/is copied from USSR/Russian weapons designs.

And US and USSR became space powers because each picked up the designs of rockets developed by Nazi German scientists. In fact Werner von Braun of V-2 fame designed US's Saturn V.

Terror bombing civilians is not “fighting” and it’s not a “war” my friend

Of course those were wars, even if the targets had primarily been civilians, which they weren't. Name me a war where no civilians are injured or killed? Or maybe in your mind there's no such thing as war, but for purposes of communication, for language, it's actually useful to use the same meanings others do; indeed that's the whole point of the affair.

country has to produce ALL of its weapons

If you want to include the entire supply chain then no country satisfies this "definition". Even a US aircraft carrier uses computers made in Taiwan. And while I don't have direct evidence I suspect Russia also uses OEM parts sourced globally, not to mention that they probably use precision machining tools obtained from Germany.

they still felt that they needed that extra boost of steroids (nuclear weapons) in order to defeat Japan

Casualties would have been higher on both sides. But the point of using nukes was different. And in any case only a fool measures a country's military fortitude by how many men it is willing to have senselessly slaughtered. The whole point of war is to win with minimum casualties and costs, just as with practically any other endeavor.

More treasure from the public library tonight: Katyń, by Andrzej Wajda, whose father perished there. Did you know it was a negotiation, that the Germans took the enlisted men as prisoners and the Soviets took the officer corps? Also, many Russians were killed there as well.

You know, Chuckmeister, caution is in order when agreeing with Rurik, who seems all too susceptible to picking up the wrong end of the stick. First, misreading clear writing. And then, not a Russian order? Okay, so Stalin was a Georgian. But he wasn't a Jew. Combatting historical lies isn't helped by creating your own.

Back to the long neglected subject of Phil’s article. If the US had the capability of shooting down ballistic missiles fired by anyone, they would have already shot-down one of Kim’s missiles, reducing N. Korean’s over-hyped ability to nuke the US to zero.

There is considerable debate about EMP and what it would take to knock out the grid. I am no expert...

Without the expense, unpredictability and complexity of a nuclear EMP blast, the entire American grid can be taken down permanently with 30-50 RPGs. Essentially, it would take little more than drive-by shootings at the 30-50 LPTs (Large Power Transformers) at strategically selected choke points on America’s ancient grid to take the whole thing down. It may not even take that many. I’ve read that as few as 10-15 would be all that’s required depending on timing and grid loading.

As an LPT takes >1.5 years to design/build, and would have to come from overseas, they would take all of 2 years to replace. 2 years without electricity would leave much of the country in chaos, so the national grid would probably never be recovered. Not to mention that 100 Fukashimas will be depending on diesel generators to keep them cooled indefinitely.

Well, if that's the case I say there is a large untapped market for hardening LPTs; all it would take is proper advertising. The hardening could be concrete barriers, rolled up wire fences, heavy chains... if you really want to look cool you could make applique active armor blocks like those used to AFVs. Or spaced armor like a Leopard tank.

I will note that this has already occurred in the People's Republic of California:

"The Metcalf sniper attack was a "sophisticated" assault on Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Metcalf Transmission Substation located in Coyote, California, near the border of San Jose, on April 16, 2013, in which gunmen fired on 17 electrical transformers. The attack resulted in over $15 million worth of damage.

"Prior to the attack, a series of fiber-optic telecommunications cables operated by AT&T were cut by the culprits. Additionally, following the attack, investigators found small piles of rocks near to where the shots had been fired, the type of formations that can be used to scout firing positions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

The Israelis have taken note of electrical power distribution vulnerabilities; Sargent & Lundy was tasked them to design power distribution towers that would remain standing if one of the legs was blown off by Arabs decades ago.

As mentioned elsewhere here, drive-by shootings into local step down transformer stations would be easier than using a fork to cut apple pie crust. Since there are tens of thousands of Islamist terrorists residing in Amurcka (mustn't be Islamophobic, now), a call for simultaneous bombing and large caliber bullets, e.g., 50 cal, sprayed into the largest units, would cost billions, produce widespread panic and chaos, and probably result in a large segment of the Amurkan population bending over, prostrate, and saying "Please, no more, I'll do anything you ask". "Doan hit me no mo".

Terror bombing civilians is not “fighting” and it’s not a “war” my friend. All those examples of “glorious” victories by US that you mentioned – Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia were terror bombing campaigns against mostly civilians – not wars.

Exception is perhaps the Iraq war – the beginning of it -it was fought against a regular army, but your rating of Iraq’s army is way exaggerated. By my definition for any country to be considered to have a “great army” one of the basic requirements is – that country has to produce ALL of its weapons.

Iraq didn’t make any of the weapons that they used – nor did they know how to use them properly – no disrespect here, Arabs are brave people, but bravery is not enough.

By my definition - countries that can be considered to have great armies based on the fact that they produce ALL of their weapons are: US, Russia. That’s it.

The Europeans – France, GB, Germany and also Japan are capable of producing all of their weapons, but are not doing that because they are US vassals. China is almost there.

The Russians pissed me off few years ago when they tried to buy the Mistrals from the frogs. No great power ever buys someone else's weapons.

But going back to US, even with all their weapons produced domestically, they still felt that they needed that extra boost of steroids (nuclear weapons) in order to defeat Japan, because their casualties would have been too high if they tried to invade Japan conventionally (boo-hoo).

If you can’t accept the casualties, you have no business fighting wars and pretending that you are “great power” let alone “superpower”.

Very interesting metrics and definitions. I agree mostly.

One thing…

no disrespect here, Arabs are brave people, but bravery is not enough

Arabs can be tough as nails and very brave when they believe in what they are fighting for (backing a stupid invasion for Saddam is not very inspiring). Otherwise, they can put everyone to task for first place in the Global Coward Olympics.

“But the real reason why the White House gets away with saber rattling is historical, that the continental United States has not experienced the consequences of war since Pancho Villa invaded in 1916.”

It seems every national public will indulge an appetite for war, if it remains untouched. Certainly such fueled the approval for Germany’s wars, until the war came home.

The perception of immunity and impunity combine to create a moral vacuum, indistinguishable from fulfilling the adage, “if thoughts could kill.” Instead of being like God, one becomes the very Devil, with all the consequences to follow.

“By my definition – countries that can be considered to have great armies based on the fact that they produce ALL of their weapons are: US, Russia.”

The MIC corporatists are so greedy, that they have outsourced buying components to construct those supposedly “Made in America” advanced weapons from the very Asian rivals to American financial and military power.

You can bet that at the outbreak of more robust differences, that those components will no longer be available, and that we won’t know how to make them here, even if we could, mirroring the same deindustrialization the elites chose for our peacetime manufacturing. That is what the United States did to Japan, deprive it of needed military essentials, in that case, fuels in the decade that led to the Pacific War.

“Missile defense” is not even a relevant or worthwhile subject to spend time and resources. A thermonuclear device exploded at ground level of above in the ChewNighted States would be smuggled in and reassembled, and then driven to a payload target. This would be Washington, aka The Swamp, Madhattan, Seattle, Houston, Dallas, etc. A ground based nuke could be airlifted to a height that would cause the greatest EMP damage to solid state devices of all types.

One such device detonated in Wall Street would depopulate lower Manhattan, at least for many years due to residual radiation.

And that doesn’t even include “dirty” bombs. The effect on Wall Street would be the same. And The Swamp, as well.

Either we have Peter Principle dunces for “Thunk Tanks”, generals, advisors, and “experts”, or traitors, and subversives.

Articles such as these are like oil geologists who keep drilling for oil, even when all that comes up is salt water. This is so stewpid that even Dubya Bush probably realizes it

Terror bombing civilians is not “fighting” and it’s not a “war” my friend. All those examples of “glorious” victories by US that you mentioned – Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia were terror bombing campaigns against mostly civilians – not wars.

Exception is perhaps the Iraq war – the beginning of it -it was fought against a regular army, but your rating of Iraq’s army is way exaggerated. By my definition for any country to be considered to have a “great army” one of the basic requirements is – that country has to produce ALL of its weapons.

Iraq didn’t make any of the weapons that they used – nor did they know how to use them properly – no disrespect here, Arabs are brave people, but bravery is not enough.

By my definition - countries that can be considered to have great armies based on the fact that they produce ALL of their weapons are: US, Russia. That’s it.

The Europeans – France, GB, Germany and also Japan are capable of producing all of their weapons, but are not doing that because they are US vassals. China is almost there.

The Russians pissed me off few years ago when they tried to buy the Mistrals from the frogs. No great power ever buys someone else's weapons.

But going back to US, even with all their weapons produced domestically, they still felt that they needed that extra boost of steroids (nuclear weapons) in order to defeat Japan, because their casualties would have been too high if they tried to invade Japan conventionally (boo-hoo).

If you can’t accept the casualties, you have no business fighting wars and pretending that you are “great power” let alone “superpower”.

Terror bombing civilians is not “fighting” and it’s not a “war” my friend

Of course those were wars, even if the targets had primarily been civilians, which they weren’t. Name me a war where no civilians are injured or killed? Or maybe in your mind there’s no such thing as war, but for purposes of communication, for language, it’s actually useful to use the same meanings others do; indeed that’s the whole point of the affair.

country has to produce ALL of its weapons

If you want to include the entire supply chain then no country satisfies this “definition”. Even a US aircraft carrier uses computers made in Taiwan. And while I don’t have direct evidence I suspect Russia also uses OEM parts sourced globally, not to mention that they probably use precision machining tools obtained from Germany.

they still felt that they needed that extra boost of steroids (nuclear weapons) in order to defeat Japan

Casualties would have been higher on both sides. But the point of using nukes was different. And in any case only a fool measures a country’s military fortitude by how many men it is willing to have senselessly slaughtered. The whole point of war is to win with minimum casualties and costs, just as with practically any other endeavor.

And in any case only a fool measures a country’s military fortitude by how many men it is willing to have senselessly slaughtered. The whole point of war is to win with minimum casualties and costs, just as with practically any other endeavor.

Then, I guess, congratulations are in order. The US is the noblest fighting force (NOT) the history has ever seen. Forgive me for my naivety.

Terror bombing civilians is not “fighting” and it’s not a “war” my friend. All those examples of “glorious” victories by US that you mentioned – Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia were terror bombing campaigns against mostly civilians – not wars.

Exception is perhaps the Iraq war – the beginning of it -it was fought against a regular army, but your rating of Iraq’s army is way exaggerated. By my definition for any country to be considered to have a “great army” one of the basic requirements is – that country has to produce ALL of its weapons.

Iraq didn’t make any of the weapons that they used – nor did they know how to use them properly – no disrespect here, Arabs are brave people, but bravery is not enough.

By my definition - countries that can be considered to have great armies based on the fact that they produce ALL of their weapons are: US, Russia. That’s it.

The Europeans – France, GB, Germany and also Japan are capable of producing all of their weapons, but are not doing that because they are US vassals. China is almost there.

The Russians pissed me off few years ago when they tried to buy the Mistrals from the frogs. No great power ever buys someone else's weapons.

But going back to US, even with all their weapons produced domestically, they still felt that they needed that extra boost of steroids (nuclear weapons) in order to defeat Japan, because their casualties would have been too high if they tried to invade Japan conventionally (boo-hoo).

If you can’t accept the casualties, you have no business fighting wars and pretending that you are “great power” let alone “superpower”.

{The Russians pissed me off few years ago when they tried to buy the Mistrals from the frogs.}

From what I remember (publicly available info….), Russian military was not too happy with civilian leadership forcing them to buy the 2 French Mistral ships: they said it was not suitable to Russian weather conditions. My read of it is that Moscow wanted to drive a wedge between France and US/NATO by buying military equipment from France. Certainly Russia can design and build something like the Mistral. And apparently a couple design bureaus are working on Russian versions* of Mistral.
Also, if Russian military needs a helicopter-carrying assault ship, why not buy a couple very-well-designed foreign versions, use them for a while, learn its strengths/weaknesses and then design and build your own.

There is no shame in learning from others.
Nazis copied the excellent T-34 in their Panther: apparently Nazi so-called ‘Master Race’ was not too proud to learn from, you know, ‘Untermenschen’.
And if I remember correctly, the excellent Soviet/Russian RPG series was built upon the German Panzerfaust.

{ No great power ever buys someone else’s weapons.}

Sometimes it’s more cost effective and quicker to learn from others, and then improve.
Most of China’s military technology was/is copied from USSR/Russian weapons designs.

And US and USSR became space powers because each picked up the designs of rockets developed by Nazi German scientists. In fact Werner von Braun of V-2 fame designed US’s Saturn V.

If I was attacked by a pack of stray dogs and a Frenchman happened to be near by offering to sell me a stick to defend myself – I wouldn’t buy it, I would rather be torn to pieces than buy weapon from a Frenchman.

French are backstabbers. During the Falkland war, they sold anti-ship missiles to Argentina and then told the British how to defeat those French-made anti-ship missiles. How rotten is that? It’s one of the biggest reasons why Argentina lost the Falkland war.

I was so glad that the Mistral deal fell through. The whole point of making your own weapons is to know them down to the most intricate detail, so no nasty surprises can happen to you when you use them against someone who might be either the manufacturer of those weapons or someone who is on better terms with the manufacturer then your country is. The Russians should have known better than trying to buy weapons from the French.

Without the expense, unpredictability and complexity of a nuclear EMP blast, the entire American grid can be taken down permanently with 30-50 RPGs. Essentially, it would take little more than drive-by shootings at the 30-50 LPTs (Large Power Transformers) at strategically selected choke points on America's ancient grid to take the whole thing down. It may not even take that many. I've read that as few as 10-15 would be all that's required depending on timing and grid loading.

As an LPT takes >1.5 years to design/build, and would have to come from overseas, they would take all of 2 years to replace. 2 years without electricity would leave much of the country in chaos, so the national grid would probably never be recovered. Not to mention that 100 Fukashimas will be depending on diesel generators to keep them cooled indefinitely.

Very messy business all 'round.

Well, if that’s the case I say there is a large untapped market for hardening LPTs; all it would take is proper advertising. The hardening could be concrete barriers, rolled up wire fences, heavy chains… if you really want to look cool you could make applique active armor blocks like those used to AFVs. Or spaced armor like a Leopard tank.

I will note that this has already occurred in the People’s Republic of California:

“The Metcalf sniper attack was a “sophisticated” assault on Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Metcalf Transmission Substation located in Coyote, California, near the border of San Jose, on April 16, 2013, in which gunmen fired on 17 electrical transformers. The attack resulted in over $15 million worth of damage.

“Prior to the attack, a series of fiber-optic telecommunications cables operated by AT&T were cut by the culprits. Additionally, following the attack, investigators found small piles of rocks near to where the shots had been fired, the type of formations that can be used to scout firing positions.

The Israelis have taken note of electrical power distribution vulnerabilities; Sargent & Lundy was tasked them to design power distribution towers that would remain standing if one of the legs was blown off by Arabs decades ago.

Terror bombing civilians is not “fighting” and it’s not a “war” my friend

Of course those were wars, even if the targets had primarily been civilians, which they weren't. Name me a war where no civilians are injured or killed? Or maybe in your mind there's no such thing as war, but for purposes of communication, for language, it's actually useful to use the same meanings others do; indeed that's the whole point of the affair.

country has to produce ALL of its weapons

If you want to include the entire supply chain then no country satisfies this "definition". Even a US aircraft carrier uses computers made in Taiwan. And while I don't have direct evidence I suspect Russia also uses OEM parts sourced globally, not to mention that they probably use precision machining tools obtained from Germany.

they still felt that they needed that extra boost of steroids (nuclear weapons) in order to defeat Japan

Casualties would have been higher on both sides. But the point of using nukes was different. And in any case only a fool measures a country's military fortitude by how many men it is willing to have senselessly slaughtered. The whole point of war is to win with minimum casualties and costs, just as with practically any other endeavor.

And in any case only a fool measures a country’s military fortitude by how many men it is willing to have senselessly slaughtered. The whole point of war is to win with minimum casualties and costs, just as with practically any other endeavor.

Then, I guess, congratulations are in order. The US is the noblest fighting force (NOT) the history has ever seen. Forgive me for my naivety.

War is not noble, never has been; it is about killing others who have done nothing to you. I wasn't even making the point that the US is the noblest fighting force, just that like any other endeavor, people engaged in war seek good outcomes. Which means, minimum casualties and costs (aside from the MIC corruption, which skews the cost component).

The problem with US war-making is not that they are ignoble (though certainly there is that component), it is that the US contemporaneously engages in wars that are unjust per se. Wars are horrific and should be conducted only if absolutely necessary, and the US falls far, far short of that yardstick. (But then so do all the "great powers" - the ability to engage in optional wars is perhaps what defines a "great power", certainly France, Russia, UK have all engaged in such optional wars in the last few decades).

To Art and Radical Center : Trump is deadly serious about the threat North Korea is to Japan and South Korea let alone the USA. China and Russia have to talk sense into North Korea or there will be no North Korea.

{The Russians pissed me off few years ago when they tried to buy the Mistrals from the frogs.}

From what I remember (publicly available info....), Russian military was not too happy with civilian leadership forcing them to buy the 2 French Mistral ships: they said it was not suitable to Russian weather conditions. My read of it is that Moscow wanted to drive a wedge between France and US/NATO by buying military equipment from France. Certainly Russia can design and build something like the Mistral. And apparently a couple design bureaus are working on Russian versions* of Mistral. Also, if Russian military needs a helicopter-carrying assault ship, why not buy a couple very-well-designed foreign versions, use them for a while, learn its strengths/weaknesses and then design and build your own.

There is no shame in learning from others.Nazis copied the excellent T-34 in their Panther: apparently Nazi so-called 'Master Race' was not too proud to learn from, you know, 'Untermenschen'.And if I remember correctly, the excellent Soviet/Russian RPG series was built upon the German Panzerfaust.

{ No great power ever buys someone else’s weapons.}

Sometimes it's more cost effective and quicker to learn from others, and then improve.Most of China's military technology was/is copied from USSR/Russian weapons designs.

And US and USSR became space powers because each picked up the designs of rockets developed by Nazi German scientists. In fact Werner von Braun of V-2 fame designed US's Saturn V.

If I was attacked by a pack of stray dogs and a Frenchman happened to be near by offering to sell me a stick to defend myself – I wouldn’t buy it, I would rather be torn to pieces than buy weapon from a Frenchman.

French are backstabbers. During the Falkland war, they sold anti-ship missiles to Argentina and then told the British how to defeat those French-made anti-ship missiles. How rotten is that? It’s one of the biggest reasons why Argentina lost the Falkland war.

I was so glad that the Mistral deal fell through. The whole point of making your own weapons is to know them down to the most intricate detail, so no nasty surprises can happen to you when you use them against someone who might be either the manufacturer of those weapons or someone who is on better terms with the manufacturer then your country is. The Russians should have known better than trying to buy weapons from the French.

{The Russians pissed me off few years ago when they tried to buy the Mistrals from the frogs.}

From what I remember (publicly available info....), Russian military was not too happy with civilian leadership forcing them to buy the 2 French Mistral ships: they said it was not suitable to Russian weather conditions. My read of it is that Moscow wanted to drive a wedge between France and US/NATO by buying military equipment from France. Certainly Russia can design and build something like the Mistral. And apparently a couple design bureaus are working on Russian versions* of Mistral. Also, if Russian military needs a helicopter-carrying assault ship, why not buy a couple very-well-designed foreign versions, use them for a while, learn its strengths/weaknesses and then design and build your own.

There is no shame in learning from others.Nazis copied the excellent T-34 in their Panther: apparently Nazi so-called 'Master Race' was not too proud to learn from, you know, 'Untermenschen'.And if I remember correctly, the excellent Soviet/Russian RPG series was built upon the German Panzerfaust.

{ No great power ever buys someone else’s weapons.}

Sometimes it's more cost effective and quicker to learn from others, and then improve.Most of China's military technology was/is copied from USSR/Russian weapons designs.

And US and USSR became space powers because each picked up the designs of rockets developed by Nazi German scientists. In fact Werner von Braun of V-2 fame designed US's Saturn V.

Anything is possible under the doctrine of Mutually Assured Dumb Goyim Destruction.
(M.A.D.G.D.)

Thank you for providing the fascinating link!

More treasure from the public library tonight: Katyń, by Andrzej Wajda, whose father perished there. Did you know it was a negotiation, that the Germans took the enlisted men as prisoners and the Soviets took the officer corps? Also, many Russians were killed there as well.

I remember writing a long time ago that it wasn't 'Russians' who were giving orders at Katyn

Millions of Russians fought the Fiend, and many thousands were 'keelhauled' at Yalta for doing so

I'm very glad this movie has been made

from the link:

The Soviet soldiers and the Nazis are villains. There is little grey area between.

well, it was the Soviets who rounded up the poets and priests and academics and authors and professors and officers, and stood them at the edge of a ditch and pulled the triggers- and drove the bulldozers, and the Nazis who simply discovered the crime (ultimately to be blamed for it by the treacherous allies), so at least in that context of the villains of Katyn, who actually did it- shouldn't be such a grey area.

from the link:

Wajda has complained in the past that the younger generation in Poland have showed little interest in the country’s history.

because all they're ever told is lies!

Relentless, relentless, relentless agenda-driven lies

and they're understandably jaded

Robin:

Did you know it was a negotiation, that the Germans took the enlisted men as prisoners and the Soviets took the officer corps

are you suggesting that the Nazis collaborated with the Soviets at Katyn?!

Well, if that's the case I say there is a large untapped market for hardening LPTs; all it would take is proper advertising. The hardening could be concrete barriers, rolled up wire fences, heavy chains... if you really want to look cool you could make applique active armor blocks like those used to AFVs. Or spaced armor like a Leopard tank.

I will note that this has already occurred in the People's Republic of California:

"The Metcalf sniper attack was a "sophisticated" assault on Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Metcalf Transmission Substation located in Coyote, California, near the border of San Jose, on April 16, 2013, in which gunmen fired on 17 electrical transformers. The attack resulted in over $15 million worth of damage.

"Prior to the attack, a series of fiber-optic telecommunications cables operated by AT&T were cut by the culprits. Additionally, following the attack, investigators found small piles of rocks near to where the shots had been fired, the type of formations that can be used to scout firing positions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

The Israelis have taken note of electrical power distribution vulnerabilities; Sargent & Lundy was tasked them to design power distribution towers that would remain standing if one of the legs was blown off by Arabs decades ago.

Well, if that’s the case I say there is a large untapped market for hardening LPTs; all it would take is proper advertising.

I would think that a major impediment would be the state utility commissions; how are you going to get a rate increase for a potential terrorist attack? The consumer groups would, of course, complain about paying more for a theoretical problem. Would DHS finance this, in part or whole?

The bigger lie here - seriously - is that there are 'nuclear weapons' at all. If you look at the evidence, it's clear that 'nuclear weapons' as a whole were fake from the beginning, with multiple proofs now that, e.g., Hiroshima was a chemical fire-bombing war crime, just like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Dresden, Hamburg.

The political context for the nuclear weapons scam after Hiroshima, was the USA-Moscow deal in Stalin's later years, that Stalin would pretend to be a 'nuclear weapons power' too, riches & tech would be passed on to Soviet elites (as Antony Sutton, 'Best Enemy Money Can Buy' proved was happening); and the world would be in fear of 'nuclear terror' supporting big-power domination of the earth & trillions of profits for oligarchs via 'weapons industries'.

Swedish nuclear engineer Anders Björkman, once asked to investigate 'nuclear weapons' for Sweden, has been showing in detail for years that nuclear weapons are impossible, fake, & have never existed (versus nuclear power, which does work). From a recent overview of why Hiroshima was not a 'nuclear' or 'atomic bomb' explosion:
http://www.newnationalist.net/2017/08/01/was-hiroshima-firebombed-and-not-nuked/

- The area destroyed in Hiroshima, was only one-fourth the size of the area destroyed in Tokyo fire-bombing with identical devastation

- US military Major Alexander de Seversky, surveying Japanese cities shortly afterwards, found wooden-house-burned Hiroshima to show no signs at all of anything other than chemical fire-bombing, just like Tokyo, Yokohama & Osaka ... central iron-steel buildings were intact, fragile objects undamaged, even flag poles still up beneath 'ground zero' ... no spot where things had been 'vapourised'

- The 'smoking gun' proving Hiroshima was fake, is in 1945 US military records, logging 66 aeroplanes as 'chemically fire-bombing Imabari, Japan', close to Hiroshima, at the same date & hour as the alleged 'atomic bomb' ... Imabari which no longer existed, having been totally destroyed in 2 previous fire-bombing raids ... this was the fleet that fire-bombed Hiroshima

- Photographs of Hiroshima smoke look exactly like columns of smoke from chemical fire-bombing, confirmed by Japanese witnesses who eventually did speak ... in general, the 'mushroom clouds' eventually marketed as the 'nuclear weapon signature', are also from certain types of chemical explosions, as recently exploding Chinese factories have shown

- A 1990 medical study, completing 40 years of investigation of Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors, showed no genetic damage, as is typical of those exposed to too-high radiation

Recently, there has been a move to wind down the nuclear weapons hoax, with this year's 'UN resolution to ban & destroy all nuclear weapons' ... a 'great favour' the coming one-world globalist government will do for us, putting the nuclear weapons hoax to rest. They can claim to dis-assemble all the nuclear weapons like South Africa claimed to do in the past

But over 72 years, all 10 alleged 'nuclear bomb nations' have played along, in what has been a global scam, trillions for oligarchs owning armaments industries, the 'nuclear weapons' scam a major tool for the big and medium powers who are allowed to claim to have them ... Consider the history:

1960 - France chafes not to be 2nd class to Brits - FRANCE & DE GAULLE HAVE THE BOMB

1964 - China upgraded to major league - COMMIE CHINA HAS THE BOMB

1966 - Israel joins the club in time to terrorise & blackmail Arabs in 1967 & 1973 wars - JEWS HAVE THE BOMB & JEWS ARE READY TO SAMSON OPTION EVERYBODY, later 'confirmed' by Mordechai Vanunu to MI6 London Times & then maybe living on Haifa beach, not 'in Israeli prison', like 'not really in Ecuador Embassy' Julian Assange

1979 - South Africa's white apartheid gov gets to play - WHITE RACIST SOUTH AFRICA HAS THE BOMB READY TO KILL BLACK PEOPLE ... but 'dismantles bombs' before Mandela & black government can find out the scam

1998 - Pakistan becomes central player in new Western anti-Muslim theme - PAKISTANI MUSLIMS HAVE THE BOMB & OSAMA OR TERRORISTS MIGHT GET AHOLD OF IT

2006 - North Korea, always making deals, gets to upgrade - CRAZY NORTH KOREA HAS THE BOMB

Well thanks for being brave enough to float such a rare or radical concept. Believe or not, I have had that thought too, but only passingly, like the moon landing spoof from a Sound stage kind of thing.

But, if it is considered that there was once said: ”The bigger the Lie, the more will believe it.” Then so, why not build and set up a really huge one? In the first place all of it was developed in the most (huge) top secrecy of the Manhattan Project, all we know is derived from a cottage industry of leakage and the talking head privileged professionals who act as intercessors to the commons or some shit over decades, and the arcanity of nuclear physics which limits quite a lot of folks from being in much position to judge it all.

So if these geniuses are so authentic, why aren’t they doing a Manhattan project to put that gaddamned Fukashima disaster back in the bottle, is that because it isn’t really what it is supposed to be? If it poisons the sea then it is very important enough

They want it both ways: ” you be scared and ignorant, and they threaten to bomb everything to oblivion and poison the Earth for a Gazillian and half years, and they act like they have better things to do. The China Syndrome must be overhyped BS.

But seriously, even if it is only a big lie, it still is cause for concern!!! I think the radiation part is true, but the bomb part, maybe that could be done with tons and tons of… TNT, for real!

And in any case only a fool measures a country’s military fortitude by how many men it is willing to have senselessly slaughtered. The whole point of war is to win with minimum casualties and costs, just as with practically any other endeavor.

Then, I guess, congratulations are in order. The US is the noblest fighting force (NOT) the history has ever seen. Forgive me for my naivety.

War is not noble, never has been; it is about killing others who have done nothing to you. I wasn’t even making the point that the US is the noblest fighting force, just that like any other endeavor, people engaged in war seek good outcomes. Which means, minimum casualties and costs (aside from the MIC corruption, which skews the cost component).

The problem with US war-making is not that they are ignoble (though certainly there is that component), it is that the US contemporaneously engages in wars that are unjust per se. Wars are horrific and should be conducted only if absolutely necessary, and the US falls far, far short of that yardstick. (But then so do all the “great powers” – the ability to engage in optional wars is perhaps what defines a “great power”, certainly France, Russia, UK have all engaged in such optional wars in the last few decades).

This is why hawks like John McCain, while receiving a “Liberty” award from Joe Biden, can, with a straight face, get away with denouncing those Americans who have become tired of playing at being the world’s policeman. He describes them as fearful of “the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, [abandoning] the ideals we have advanced around the globe, [refusing] the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism.”

And this is why we are where we are – our government is infested by the likes of McCain, Lindsay Graham, and hundreds of others of their ilk. There is no milk of human kindness that flows in my veins when I look at these despicable creatures who have done so much harm to so many people and continue to exist, cancer and all, like Darth Cheney with his nuclear heart, while the innocents fall by the wayside from their evil.

I had wished him dead, but as a friend reminded me, it is better for him to live, suffering from excruciating agony as cancer demolishes him one cell at a time, jabbing his brain every second of every day – to the brink of madness and just a step behind the precipice that would end his life, living for decades more, tortured and despised.

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

— Herman Melville

Even the federal government watchdog agencies have concluded that the missile interception system seldom performs.

I can’t find that citation at the moment, but I recall a report from US military experts that placed the accuracy of interceptor missiles at about 10% in real-world conditions. I vaguely recall that during the Gulf war, we had placed Patriot interceptors in Israel to protect the chosen from Saddam’s Scud missiles, and apparently only a few of those decrepit scuds were successfully intercepted. I believe the lack of accuracy of these Patriot missiles was hushed up.

Meanwhile, the Russian S-300, S-400, and the soon-to-appear S-500 missile batteries have demonstrated very impressive results. Now our “allies” are all scampering over to Moscow to acquire these instead of our duds, following the utter failure of our $0.5 Trillion F-35 embarrassment.

It is high time for us to ask how we got here and who is responsible. I will give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

The president of the United States and the Congress are elected by the Americans, they are the wishes of the American people. If POTUS and the Congress are evil, you cannot blame them alone while there is no public discontent against them.

There is tremendous public discontent against them but unfortunately our dominant two party system has meant that the voter is almost never offered a real choice for change. Trump offered change, as did Obama and Bush before him, but it is all just a variation on the same formula of endless war and a corrupt system that favors those who have power.

In a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee as the only provided option in a controlled election process in a non-democracy, we can only vote for the "perceived" lesser evil, or not vote at all. Either ways, we are stuck with whoever is foisted on us.

Well thanks for being brave enough to float such a rare or radical concept. Believe or not, I have had that thought too, but only passingly, like the moon landing spoof from a Sound stage kind of thing.

But, if it is considered that there was once said: ''The bigger the Lie, the more will believe it." Then so, why not build and set up a really huge one? In the first place all of it was developed in the most (huge) top secrecy of the Manhattan Project, all we know is derived from a cottage industry of leakage and the talking head privileged professionals who act as intercessors to the commons or some shit over decades, and the arcanity of nuclear physics which limits quite a lot of folks from being in much position to judge it all.

So if these geniuses are so authentic, why aren't they doing a Manhattan project to put that gaddamned Fukashima disaster back in the bottle, is that because it isn't really what it is supposed to be? If it poisons the sea then it is very important enough

They want it both ways: " you be scared and ignorant, and they threaten to bomb everything to oblivion and poison the Earth for a Gazillian and half years, and they act like they have better things to do. The China Syndrome must be overhyped BS.

But seriously, even if it is only a big lie, it still is cause for concern!!! I think the radiation part is true, but the bomb part, maybe that could be done with tons and tons of… TNT, for real!

Ednels,

With all the Zio theater we are subject to, it’s wise to keep an open mind on all.

Subsequently, I add the article linked below on the topic of secret thermobaric nukes.

The president of the United States and the Congress are elected by the Americans, they are the wishes of the American people. If POTUS and the Congress are evil, you cannot blame them alone while there is no public discontent against them.

There is tremendous public discontent against them but unfortunately our dominant two party system has meant that the voter is almost never offered a real choice for change. Trump offered change, as did Obama and Bush before him, but it is all just a variation on the same formula of endless war and a corrupt system that favors those who have power.

Its not over confidence.If north korea tries something it will be hit so hard there will be no response..nothing left of north korea.If I was china and russia I would be worried about the spill over.

Sorry to inform you that you are the specimen of John McCain’s die-hard supporters, bigotry, ignorant and bellicose, who have been brain washed from cradle to grave by toxic warmongers in the Washington beltway and reinforced with excessive flag saluting.

North Korea will not start war first, it is only protesting the aggressions displayed by the American and SK against it. The American is the aggressor, and the Americans is most likely to trigger an Amaggardon.

If the US government hits Pyongyang with even “small” tactical nuclear weapons, how will we avoid irradiating South Korea and China, which are very nearby?

Depending on how long the radioactive debris stays aloft, how do we keep from irradiating Japan? If you look at a prevailing winds map, the winds blow west to east across the Korean peninsula and encircle Japan.

It seems the Americans have been getting away bombing, killing and waterboarding on obfuscation far too long, they become the victim of their own propaganda and they do buy in their own fake news.

Perhaps the North Korean could explain that their nuclear warhead was blown off course by wind and landed on the America.

More treasure from the public library tonight: Katyń, by Andrzej Wajda, whose father perished there. Did you know it was a negotiation, that the Germans took the enlisted men as prisoners and the Soviets took the officer corps? Also, many Russians were killed there as well.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/02/1

Also, many Russians were killed there as well.

Hi Robin,

I remember writing a long time ago that it wasn’t ‘Russians’ who were giving orders at Katyn

Millions of Russians fought the Fiend, and many thousands were ‘keelhauled’ at Yalta for doing so

I’m very glad this movie has been made

from the link:

The Soviet soldiers and the Nazis are villains. There is little grey area between.

well, it was the Soviets who rounded up the poets and priests and academics and authors and professors and officers, and stood them at the edge of a ditch and pulled the triggers- and drove the bulldozers, and the Nazis who simply discovered the crime (ultimately to be blamed for it by the treacherous allies), so at least in that context of the villains of Katyn, who actually did it- shouldn’t be such a grey area.

from the link:

Wajda has complained in the past that the younger generation in Poland have showed little interest in the country’s history.

because all they’re ever told is lies!

Relentless, relentless, relentless agenda-driven lies

and they’re understandably jaded

Robin:

Did you know it was a negotiation, that the Germans took the enlisted men as prisoners and the Soviets took the officer corps

are you suggesting that the Nazis collaborated with the Soviets at Katyn?!

The president of the United States and the Congress are elected by the Americans, they are the wishes of the American people. If POTUS and the Congress are evil, you cannot blame them alone while there is no public discontent against them.

If POTUS and the Congress are evil, you cannot blame them alone while there is no public discontent against them.

Do you live on another planet? There is plenty of discontent evident. Ever hear of antifa?

To clarify, neither the reviewer nor I implied that Nazis/Germans had responsibility for Katyn.

The reviewer is saying that the Nazis were guilty of heinous crimes of their own, so scarcely entitled to make propaganda hay off of Katyn.

And I was referring to the opening of the film, which I presume to be accurate, where the defeated Polish army is separated by Soviets and Germans – who are not yet fighting each other, but dividing the spoils of their invasions from opposite directions which caught the Poles in between.

Without the expense, unpredictability and complexity of a nuclear EMP blast, the entire American grid can be taken down permanently with 30-50 RPGs. Essentially, it would take little more than drive-by shootings at the 30-50 LPTs (Large Power Transformers) at strategically selected choke points on America's ancient grid to take the whole thing down. It may not even take that many. I've read that as few as 10-15 would be all that's required depending on timing and grid loading.

As an LPT takes >1.5 years to design/build, and would have to come from overseas, they would take all of 2 years to replace. 2 years without electricity would leave much of the country in chaos, so the national grid would probably never be recovered. Not to mention that 100 Fukashimas will be depending on diesel generators to keep them cooled indefinitely.

Very messy business all 'round.

As mentioned elsewhere here, drive-by shootings into local step down transformer stations would be easier than using a fork to cut apple pie crust. Since there are tens of thousands of Islamist terrorists residing in Amurcka (mustn’t be Islamophobic, now), a call for simultaneous bombing and large caliber bullets, e.g., 50 cal, sprayed into the largest units, would cost billions, produce widespread panic and chaos, and probably result in a large segment of the Amurkan population bending over, prostrate, and saying “Please, no more, I’ll do anything you ask”. “Doan hit me no mo”.

The president of the United States and the Congress are elected by the Americans, they are the wishes of the American people. If POTUS and the Congress are evil, you cannot blame them alone while there is no public discontent against them.

In a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee as the only provided option in a controlled election process in a non-democracy, we can only vote for the “perceived” lesser evil, or not vote at all. Either ways, we are stuck with whoever is foisted on us.

Those holding placards chanting slogans are not public discontent, they are vocal minorities in the eyes of the administration and the Congress because the same lot of politicians got returned to the office no matter what those vocal minorities do.

If the Americans really want to show their public discontent, start a revolution, overthrow the current oligarch plutocratic system and establishment, and start all over again for a real democracy.

Anything is possible under the doctrine of Mutually Assured Dumb Goyim Destruction.
(M.A.D.G.D.)

Thank you for providing the fascinating link!

You know, Chuckmeister, caution is in order when agreeing with Rurik, who seems all too susceptible to picking up the wrong end of the stick. First, misreading clear writing. And then, not a Russian order? Okay, so Stalin was a Georgian. But he wasn’t a Jew. Combatting historical lies isn’t helped by creating your own.

So you would have no issue with the North Koreans, China, Russia or Outer Bumfreakistan running military exercises with Mexico just south of the Rio Grande?" Chris Mallory, to Grandpa

Chris, you manage to pack quite a few false equivalencies into your 25 words! Here's an example: Mexico is a much larger country than South Korea -- anywhere in South Korea could be taken as "just south of the Rio Grande". The area of Mexico is about 20 times that of South Korea! Plus, if you think about it, the only realistic exercises would have to be at the DMZ or at some kind of mock-up of the DMZ ... and where would you like UN/USA/ROK to construct that mock-up?

But of course, Chris, you don't think about anything at all ... you don't have to, being absolutely certain of your righteousness ... and the evil of all those who oppose your stupid POV. Very "liberal" of you!

You know, Chuckmeister, caution is in order when agreeing with Rurik, who seems all too susceptible to picking up the wrong end of the stick. First, misreading clear writing. And then, not a Russian order? Okay, so Stalin was a Georgian. But he wasn't a Jew. Combatting historical lies isn't helped by creating your own.

RobinG,

Uh, excuse me, “creating my own” what?

I know the Vodzh was Georgian and a drop out from an Orthodox seminary.

You know, Chuckmeister, caution is in order when agreeing with Rurik, who seems all too susceptible to picking up the wrong end of the stick. First, misreading clear writing. And then, not a Russian order? Okay, so Stalin was a Georgian. But he wasn't a Jew. Combatting historical lies isn't helped by creating your own.

There is a lot of historical back-and-forth as to whom was responsible for the Katyn Massacre.

Given the predominance of Jews who were supportive of Josef Stalin's goal to liberate central & western Europe from capitalism, I tend to be very open to the idea that Red Army did the Katyn massacre and blamed the act on the Germans.

For me, it was likely a Bolshevik derived False Flag killing.

If such makes me a Fool for Rurik, so be it. (Sigh) I am more inclined to get word out as to who really did 9/11. Hint: It wasn't Islamo-Fascists!

"Your own" was in the general sense, as in "one's own," (or it could have been 'his own').

Look it, RobinG,

My ancestors came from Poland, coal miners.

There is a lot of historical back-and-forth as to whom was responsible for the Katyn Massacre.

Given the predominance of Jews who were supportive of Josef Stalin’s goal to liberate central & western Europe from capitalism, I tend to be very open to the idea that Red Army did the Katyn massacre and blamed the act on the Germans.

For me, it was likely a Bolshevik derived False Flag killing.

If such makes me a Fool for Rurik, so be it. (Sigh) I am more inclined to get word out as to who really did 9/11. Hint: It wasn’t Islamo-Fascists!

Good that you're "open to the idea," since the Russians admitted it in the 1990's. Yes, the Bolshies used German weapons and ammo to implicate Hitler. But there's quite a difference between Red Army and NKVD, just as between Wehrmacht and SS.

Wiki says, "The Katyn massacre...was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs"...), in April and May 1940. Though the killings took place at several different locations, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered.

The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's [a Georgian Orthodox, not a Jew] proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. .... Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were Polish intelligentsia that the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests."

No doubt it was a Stalin-ordered massacre but in this case it is not fair to blame Jews. Recall that it was Stalin who "betrayed the revolution" (according to Trotskyists and most Jews) by purging the grossly disproportionate influence of Jews from the party. Stalin and Beria were both (Orthodox) Greek.

OTOH Stalin did not purge all Jews and, e.g., the Jew Lazar Kaganovich was responsible for the "Holodomor".

No doubt it was a Stalin-ordered massacre but in this case it is not fair to blame Jews. Recall that it was Stalin who "betrayed the revolution" (according to Trotskyists and most Jews) by purging the grossly disproportionate influence of Jews from the party. Stalin and Beria were both (Orthodox) Greek.

OTOH Stalin did not purge all Jews and, e.g., the Jew Lazar Kaganovich was responsible for the "Holodomor".

It has to be read in Russian, the same as a poem about little girl and SS guard--a truly powerful experience. Having said that: the pretext of Benjamin Okopnik introduction to Evtushenko's poem is full of shit and a typical exaggeration beyond all reasons, especially that:

and the subsequent injustice of the government’s refusal to raise a monument to the thousands of Jews executed there by the Nazi troops,produced a tremendous effect in Russia.

No, it didn't, because before any such monument to Holocaust Jewish victims to be erected, monument to millions upon millions of specifically Slav "untermensch" has to come up. You just demonstrated perfectly how Jews themselves continue to discredit a tragedy and a trauma of Holocaust by pretending that they were the only "special" group, yet, if memory doesn't fail me, and it doesn't, millions upon millions of Slavs were shot, starved, exterminated in concentration camps, shipped as slaves to the Third Reich and, if ever in Russia, unless being in some faux-intellectual "liberal circles" (a minute minority), try to peddle this "tremendous effect" to Russians or Belorussians, or Ukrainians who lost generations of men and women in that War. At best they will laugh to your face. So, no--there was no "tremendous effect", because during Soviet times, apart from issues with Israel and Zionism, Soviet view of Great Patriotic War was very simple--it touched everyone. This is not to mention that hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who fought in the Red Army and died together with their Russian, Belorussian, Kazakh, Azeri, Chuvash, Armenian etc. comrades are not Holocaust victims--they were warriors, many of whom fought valiantly. Half-a-million of them.

For many American Jews today Holocaust is just business and an excellent whip to whip real war ignorant American population into proper ideological shape my means of guilt. The same way as this Okopnik-fella does. Moreover, WW II was not about Jews and Holocaust as US Jews try to convince many impressionable (and badly educated) Americans.

Well, if that’s the case I say there is a large untapped market for hardening LPTs; all it would take is proper advertising.

Any sign of that happening?

I would think that a major impediment would be the state utility commissions; how are you going to get a rate increase for a potential terrorist attack? The consumer groups would, of course, complain about paying more for a theoretical problem. Would DHS finance this, in part or whole?

It has to be read in Russian, the same as a poem about little girl and SS guard–a truly powerful experience. Having said that: the pretext of Benjamin Okopnik introduction to Evtushenko’s poem is full of shit and a typical exaggeration beyond all reasons, especially that:

and the subsequent injustice of the government’s refusal to raise a monument to the thousands of Jews executed there by the Nazi troops,produced a tremendous effect in Russia.

No, it didn’t, because before any such monument to Holocaust Jewish victims to be erected, monument to millions upon millions of specifically Slav “untermensch” has to come up. You just demonstrated perfectly how Jews themselves continue to discredit a tragedy and a trauma of Holocaust by pretending that they were the only “special” group, yet, if memory doesn’t fail me, and it doesn’t, millions upon millions of Slavs were shot, starved, exterminated in concentration camps, shipped as slaves to the Third Reich and, if ever in Russia, unless being in some faux-intellectual “liberal circles” (a minute minority), try to peddle this “tremendous effect” to Russians or Belorussians, or Ukrainians who lost generations of men and women in that War. At best they will laugh to your face. So, no–there was no “tremendous effect”, because during Soviet times, apart from issues with Israel and Zionism, Soviet view of Great Patriotic War was very simple–it touched everyone. This is not to mention that hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who fought in the Red Army and died together with their Russian, Belorussian, Kazakh, Azeri, Chuvash, Armenian etc. comrades are not Holocaust victims–they were warriors, many of whom fought valiantly. Half-a-million of them.

For many American Jews today Holocaust is just business and an excellent whip to whip real war ignorant American population into proper ideological shape my means of guilt. The same way as this Okopnik-fella does. Moreover, WW II was not about Jews and Holocaust as US Jews try to convince many impressionable (and badly educated) Americans.

... In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the Soviet Union was supplied under Lend-Lease,[24] including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars[27] which augmented the existing prewar stocks of at least 20,000 locomotives and half a million railcars.[28]

Furthermore, the logistical support of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks. Indeed, by 1945, nearly a third of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge ¾ ton and Studebaker 2½ ton...

According to the Russian historian Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Lend-Lease played a crucial role in winning the war:

On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR's emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany's might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.[24]

It has to be read in Russian, the same as a poem about little girl and SS guard--a truly powerful experience. Having said that: the pretext of Benjamin Okopnik introduction to Evtushenko's poem is full of shit and a typical exaggeration beyond all reasons, especially that:

and the subsequent injustice of the government’s refusal to raise a monument to the thousands of Jews executed there by the Nazi troops,produced a tremendous effect in Russia.

No, it didn't, because before any such monument to Holocaust Jewish victims to be erected, monument to millions upon millions of specifically Slav "untermensch" has to come up. You just demonstrated perfectly how Jews themselves continue to discredit a tragedy and a trauma of Holocaust by pretending that they were the only "special" group, yet, if memory doesn't fail me, and it doesn't, millions upon millions of Slavs were shot, starved, exterminated in concentration camps, shipped as slaves to the Third Reich and, if ever in Russia, unless being in some faux-intellectual "liberal circles" (a minute minority), try to peddle this "tremendous effect" to Russians or Belorussians, or Ukrainians who lost generations of men and women in that War. At best they will laugh to your face. So, no--there was no "tremendous effect", because during Soviet times, apart from issues with Israel and Zionism, Soviet view of Great Patriotic War was very simple--it touched everyone. This is not to mention that hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who fought in the Red Army and died together with their Russian, Belorussian, Kazakh, Azeri, Chuvash, Armenian etc. comrades are not Holocaust victims--they were warriors, many of whom fought valiantly. Half-a-million of them.

For many American Jews today Holocaust is just business and an excellent whip to whip real war ignorant American population into proper ideological shape my means of guilt. The same way as this Okopnik-fella does. Moreover, WW II was not about Jews and Holocaust as US Jews try to convince many impressionable (and badly educated) Americans.

From Wiki:

… In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the Soviet Union was supplied under Lend-Lease,[24] including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars[27] which augmented the existing prewar stocks of at least 20,000 locomotives and half a million railcars.[28]

Furthermore, the logistical support of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks. Indeed, by 1945, nearly a third of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge ¾ ton and Studebaker 2½ ton…

According to the Russian historian Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Lend-Lease played a crucial role in winning the war:

On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR's emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany’s might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.[24]

LOL. Yes, and I am about to write an opus on how to perform a removal of colon polyps through throat. And why not? If Sokolov is military historian than I am sure as hell a medical doctor. I will also suggest to you--read more about WW II from such sources as Patton's Diaries, employ neocon literature, Masha Gessen could be of help too. In general, continue to live in in a BS bubble.

There is a lot of historical back-and-forth as to whom was responsible for the Katyn Massacre.

Given the predominance of Jews who were supportive of Josef Stalin's goal to liberate central & western Europe from capitalism, I tend to be very open to the idea that Red Army did the Katyn massacre and blamed the act on the Germans.

For me, it was likely a Bolshevik derived False Flag killing.

If such makes me a Fool for Rurik, so be it. (Sigh) I am more inclined to get word out as to who really did 9/11. Hint: It wasn't Islamo-Fascists!

Selah Suvorov & The Chief Culprit Ought To Become a DVD Documentary.

“There is a lot of historical back-and-forth…” Not any more.

Good that you’re “open to the idea,” since the Russians admitted it in the 1990′s. Yes, the Bolshies used German weapons and ammo to implicate Hitler. But there’s quite a difference between Red Army and NKVD, just as between Wehrmacht and SS.

Wiki says, “The Katyn massacre…was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the NKVD (“People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs”…), in April and May 1940. Though the killings took place at several different locations, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered.

The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria’s [a Georgian Orthodox, not a Jew] proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. …. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were Polish intelligentsia that the Soviets deemed to be “intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVDhe Polish Operation of the Soviet NKVD security service in 1937–1938 was a mass operation of the NKVD carried out against purported Polish agents in the Soviet Union during the period of the Great Purge. It was ordered by the Politburo against the so-called "Polish spies" and customarily interpreted by the NKVD officials as relating to "absolutely all Poles". It resulted in the sentencing of 139,835 people, and summary executions of 111,091 ethnic Poles,[3][4] as well as those accused of working for Poland.[5] The operation was implemented according to NKVD Order № 00485 signed by Nikolai Yezhov.[6] The majority of the victims were ethnically Polish but not all, according to Timothy Snyder.[7] The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry.[6] In order to speed up the process the NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names.

Clearly in the SU there was strong animus to kill Poles just three years before Katyn.

Clearly there was some coordination between NKVD and Gestapo after 1939 occupation of Poland.

There were Gestapo-NKVD Conferences held in Poland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo–NKVD_conferencesThe next series of meetings began in December 1939, a month after the first transfer of Polish prisoners of war. The conferences were held in occupied Kraków in the General Government on 6–7 December 1939; and continued for the next two days in the resort town of Zakopane in the Tatra Mountains of southern Poland (100 km from Kraków) on 8–9 December 1939. The Zakopane Conference is the most remembered. From the Soviet side, several higher officers of the NKVD secret police participated in the meetings, while the German hosts provided a group of experts from the Gestapo

This one is the best known, and took place in Zakopane,[14] starting on 20 February 1940[4] in the villa "Pan Tadeusz", located at the Droga do Białego street close to the Dolina Białego valley. The German side was represented by Adolf Eichmann and an official by the name of Zimmermann, who later became chief of the Radom District of the General Government territory. The Soviet delegation was headed by Grigoriy Litvinov with—among others—Rita Zimmerman, director of a Kolyma gold mine.

And here is Red Army and Wehrmacht 1939 victory parade in PolandПарад на Вермахта и Червената армия Полшаhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0-a3JgB_Q8Germans did the AB-Aktion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_PolandThe mass murder of Polish leaders, politicians, artists, aristocrats, the intelligentsia, and people suspected of potential anti-Nazi activity began in fall of 1939,[1] and was seen by Nazi Germany as a pre-emptive measure to keep the Polish resistance scattered and to prevent the Poles from revolting during the planned German invasion of France.[5] The anti-Polish AB-Aktion was prepared by Hans Frank, the commander of the General Government. It was also discussed with the Soviet officials during a series of secretive Gestapo-NKVD Conferences.

In the spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the Nazi authorities in German-occupied central Poland.[2] About 7,000 of them including community leaders, professors, teachers and priests (labeled as suspected of criminal activities) were subsequently massacred secretly at various locations including at the Palmiry forest complex near Palmiry.[3][4] The others were sent to German concentration camps.

Is it possible that Germans knew about Katyn and somehow were involved in it? I doubt it. If they knew about it why did they wait till 1943 to discover the graves? Did they provide logistic support? Supposedly ammunition used in Katyn was German? I do not think it means anything. Katyn and other sites where Polish POW's, police officers and intelligentsia were killed (circa 22,000) in Spring of 1940 were on Soviet Territories on Soviet. The order were issued in Moscow. Soviet Union bears total responsibility. Was there a Jewish angle? In everything Soviet Union did there was a Jewish angle. Did they hate and fear Poles because of being Russian, Jews or communists? It is a combination of all three.

After the defeat of France by Germany and when SU annexed Baltic States SU took custody of Polish POW who were interned in the Baltic States. These POW's were not killed by Soviets. Why? Perhaps Stalin no longer considered Poles a threat after France's defeat. No longer France and allied with her Poland could punish SU for being the culprit in staring the WWII.

Whether Beria was a Jew seems unknown. One could be a Greek Orthodox by upbringing and a Jew by ethnicity and an atheist by profession. I am told that "Lavarente" is likely a variation on "Lev" or "Levi".

Tell you what, I”ll be sure to clean up spills on this aisle as long as you do the same for spills on aisle “You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can fool The Dumb Goyim all of the time.” ok?

... In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the Soviet Union was supplied under Lend-Lease,[24] including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars[27] which augmented the existing prewar stocks of at least 20,000 locomotives and half a million railcars.[28]

Furthermore, the logistical support of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks. Indeed, by 1945, nearly a third of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge ¾ ton and Studebaker 2½ ton...

According to the Russian historian Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Lend-Lease played a crucial role in winning the war:

On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR's emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany's might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.[24]

Tear up that lease, your peeps did enough to earn it.

Boris Vadimovich Sokolov

LOL. Yes, and I am about to write an opus on how to perform a removal of colon polyps through throat. And why not? If Sokolov is military historian than I am sure as hell a medical doctor. I will also suggest to you–read more about WW II from such sources as Patton’s Diaries, employ neocon literature, Masha Gessen could be of help too. In general, continue to live in in a BS bubble.

It has to be read in Russian, the same as a poem about little girl and SS guard--a truly powerful experience. Having said that: the pretext of Benjamin Okopnik introduction to Evtushenko's poem is full of shit and a typical exaggeration beyond all reasons, especially that:

and the subsequent injustice of the government’s refusal to raise a monument to the thousands of Jews executed there by the Nazi troops,produced a tremendous effect in Russia.

No, it didn't, because before any such monument to Holocaust Jewish victims to be erected, monument to millions upon millions of specifically Slav "untermensch" has to come up. You just demonstrated perfectly how Jews themselves continue to discredit a tragedy and a trauma of Holocaust by pretending that they were the only "special" group, yet, if memory doesn't fail me, and it doesn't, millions upon millions of Slavs were shot, starved, exterminated in concentration camps, shipped as slaves to the Third Reich and, if ever in Russia, unless being in some faux-intellectual "liberal circles" (a minute minority), try to peddle this "tremendous effect" to Russians or Belorussians, or Ukrainians who lost generations of men and women in that War. At best they will laugh to your face. So, no--there was no "tremendous effect", because during Soviet times, apart from issues with Israel and Zionism, Soviet view of Great Patriotic War was very simple--it touched everyone. This is not to mention that hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who fought in the Red Army and died together with their Russian, Belorussian, Kazakh, Azeri, Chuvash, Armenian etc. comrades are not Holocaust victims--they were warriors, many of whom fought valiantly. Half-a-million of them.

For many American Jews today Holocaust is just business and an excellent whip to whip real war ignorant American population into proper ideological shape my means of guilt. The same way as this Okopnik-fella does. Moreover, WW II was not about Jews and Holocaust as US Jews try to convince many impressionable (and badly educated) Americans.

Thank you very much for the educated response on Okopnik’s deceptive introduction to Yevtushenko’s most well known poem, Andrei.

Sincerely, I figured (WW 2 Specialist) SolontoCroesus might have chimed-in here when I mentioned “Babi Yar,” and I regrettably forgot about your voice.

Lastly, I confess to having posted comment on the poem simply to provoke nincompoop “Little iffen-iffen” running to Wikepedia and trying to get his dumb goyim ass out of his Lobbied head.

Good that you're "open to the idea," since the Russians admitted it in the 1990's. Yes, the Bolshies used German weapons and ammo to implicate Hitler. But there's quite a difference between Red Army and NKVD, just as between Wehrmacht and SS.

Wiki says, "The Katyn massacre...was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs"...), in April and May 1940. Though the killings took place at several different locations, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered.

The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's [a Georgian Orthodox, not a Jew] proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. .... Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were Polish intelligentsia that the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests."

Hey RobinG,

Thanks a lot for the Wiki-based information!

Too bad The Maven Shama is away on “business” because otherwise, he’d show us the Way through the Katyn Forest by linking Yad Vashem’s final judgement.

Thank you, and I now return to the article M.A.D. topic and drive school bus come morning!

Did the hype of Star Wars in 1980's persuade Soviet Union that they could not keep up with the US? Is it possible that the hype about the missile defense has similar objective at least in some minds in Pentagon? But Russians do not seem to be buying it this time. Putin on several occasions said that they will improve their attack capabilities and will overwhelm any defensive measures. So there is no reason to think that anything has changed about the MAD doctrine.

I can't imagine any scenario between Russia and the US of limited nuclear exchange. It would escalate quickly to the full blown all the way attack on both sides if a limited exchange was ever attempted. And Russia has more reason to go all the way first as it is surrounded by American bases and it is at significant disadvantage in conventional forces.

From what I read, the US had information on Soviet assets in NATO (from a defector) who were rolled up when Star Wars was getting into high gear. The Russian scientists didn’t think a lot of hocus-pocus like X-ray lasers were viable but the USSR was flying blind because their assets working near those fields were gone. They didn’t know if all the hype coming from the US was garbage or if there really had been breakthroughs. That helped push Gorbachev into a more subservient bargaining position.

There is a lot of historical back-and-forth as to whom was responsible for the Katyn Massacre.

Given the predominance of Jews who were supportive of Josef Stalin's goal to liberate central & western Europe from capitalism, I tend to be very open to the idea that Red Army did the Katyn massacre and blamed the act on the Germans.

For me, it was likely a Bolshevik derived False Flag killing.

If such makes me a Fool for Rurik, so be it. (Sigh) I am more inclined to get word out as to who really did 9/11. Hint: It wasn't Islamo-Fascists!

Selah Suvorov & The Chief Culprit Ought To Become a DVD Documentary.

“it was likely a Bolshevik derived False Flag killing”

No doubt it was a Stalin-ordered massacre but in this case it is not fair to blame Jews. Recall that it was Stalin who “betrayed the revolution” (according to Trotskyists and most Jews) by purging the grossly disproportionate influence of Jews from the party. Stalin and Beria were both (Orthodox) Greek.

OTOH Stalin did not purge all Jews and, e.g., the Jew Lazar Kaganovich was responsible for the “Holodomor”.

It has to be read in Russian, the same as a poem about little girl and SS guard--a truly powerful experience. Having said that: the pretext of Benjamin Okopnik introduction to Evtushenko's poem is full of shit and a typical exaggeration beyond all reasons, especially that:

and the subsequent injustice of the government’s refusal to raise a monument to the thousands of Jews executed there by the Nazi troops,produced a tremendous effect in Russia.

No, it didn't, because before any such monument to Holocaust Jewish victims to be erected, monument to millions upon millions of specifically Slav "untermensch" has to come up. You just demonstrated perfectly how Jews themselves continue to discredit a tragedy and a trauma of Holocaust by pretending that they were the only "special" group, yet, if memory doesn't fail me, and it doesn't, millions upon millions of Slavs were shot, starved, exterminated in concentration camps, shipped as slaves to the Third Reich and, if ever in Russia, unless being in some faux-intellectual "liberal circles" (a minute minority), try to peddle this "tremendous effect" to Russians or Belorussians, or Ukrainians who lost generations of men and women in that War. At best they will laugh to your face. So, no--there was no "tremendous effect", because during Soviet times, apart from issues with Israel and Zionism, Soviet view of Great Patriotic War was very simple--it touched everyone. This is not to mention that hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who fought in the Red Army and died together with their Russian, Belorussian, Kazakh, Azeri, Chuvash, Armenian etc. comrades are not Holocaust victims--they were warriors, many of whom fought valiantly. Half-a-million of them.

For many American Jews today Holocaust is just business and an excellent whip to whip real war ignorant American population into proper ideological shape my means of guilt. The same way as this Okopnik-fella does. Moreover, WW II was not about Jews and Holocaust as US Jews try to convince many impressionable (and badly educated) Americans.

Moreover, WW II was not about Jews and Holocaust as US Jews try to convince many impressionable (and badly educated) Americans.

So that all the Slavic peoples ( Untermenschen) West of the Urals could be exterminated and the rich, fertile lands thus denuded of their native populations could be colonized by the supposedly Germanic 'Master Race'.

Good that you're "open to the idea," since the Russians admitted it in the 1990's. Yes, the Bolshies used German weapons and ammo to implicate Hitler. But there's quite a difference between Red Army and NKVD, just as between Wehrmacht and SS.

Wiki says, "The Katyn massacre...was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs"...), in April and May 1940. Though the killings took place at several different locations, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered.

The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's [a Georgian Orthodox, not a Jew] proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. .... Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were Polish intelligentsia that the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests."

Polish Operation of the NKVD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVDhe Polish Operation of the Soviet NKVD security service in 1937–1938 was a mass operation of the NKVD carried out against purported Polish agents in the Soviet Union during the period of the Great Purge. It was ordered by the Politburo against the so-called “Polish spies” and customarily interpreted by the NKVD officials as relating to “absolutely all Poles”. It resulted in the sentencing of 139,835 people, and summary executions of 111,091 ethnic Poles,[3][4] as well as those accused of working for Poland.[5] The operation was implemented according to NKVD Order № 00485 signed by Nikolai Yezhov.[6] The majority of the victims were ethnically Polish but not all, according to Timothy Snyder.[7] The remainder were ‘suspected’ of being Polish, without further inquiry.[6] In order to speed up the process the NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names.

Clearly in the SU there was strong animus to kill Poles just three years before Katyn.

Clearly there was some coordination between NKVD and Gestapo after 1939 occupation of Poland.

There were Gestapo-NKVD Conferences held in Poland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo–NKVD_conferences
The next series of meetings began in December 1939, a month after the first transfer of Polish prisoners of war. The conferences were held in occupied Kraków in the General Government on 6–7 December 1939; and continued for the next two days in the resort town of Zakopane in the Tatra Mountains of southern Poland (100 km from Kraków) on 8–9 December 1939. The Zakopane Conference is the most remembered. From the Soviet side, several higher officers of the NKVD secret police participated in the meetings, while the German hosts provided a group of experts from the Gestapo

This one is the best known, and took place in Zakopane,[14] starting on 20 February 1940[4] in the villa “Pan Tadeusz”, located at the Droga do Białego street close to the Dolina Białego valley. The German side was represented by Adolf Eichmann and an official by the name of Zimmermann, who later became chief of the Radom District of the General Government territory. The Soviet delegation was headed by Grigoriy Litvinov with—among others—Rita Zimmerman, director of a Kolyma gold mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_Poland
The mass murder of Polish leaders, politicians, artists, aristocrats, the intelligentsia, and people suspected of potential anti-Nazi activity began in fall of 1939,[1] and was seen by Nazi Germany as a pre-emptive measure to keep the Polish resistance scattered and to prevent the Poles from revolting during the planned German invasion of France.[5] The anti-Polish AB-Aktion was prepared by Hans Frank, the commander of the General Government. It was also discussed with the Soviet officials during a series of secretive Gestapo-NKVD Conferences.

In the spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the Nazi authorities in German-occupied central Poland.[2] About 7,000 of them including community leaders, professors, teachers and priests (labeled as suspected of criminal activities) were subsequently massacred secretly at various locations including at the Palmiry forest complex near Palmiry.[3][4] The others were sent to German concentration camps.

Is it possible that Germans knew about Katyn and somehow were involved in it? I doubt it. If they knew about it why did they wait till 1943 to discover the graves? Did they provide logistic support? Supposedly ammunition used in Katyn was German? I do not think it means anything. Katyn and other sites where Polish POW’s, police officers and intelligentsia were killed (circa 22,000) in Spring of 1940 were on Soviet Territories on Soviet. The order were issued in Moscow. Soviet Union bears total responsibility. Was there a Jewish angle? In everything Soviet Union did there was a Jewish angle. Did they hate and fear Poles because of being Russian, Jews or communists? It is a combination of all three.

After the defeat of France by Germany and when SU annexed Baltic States SU took custody of Polish POW who were interned in the Baltic States. These POW’s were not killed by Soviets. Why? Perhaps Stalin no longer considered Poles a threat after France’s defeat. No longer France and allied with her Poland could punish SU for being the culprit in staring the WWII.

An excellent commentary on German/Bolshevik cooperation in the destruction of Poland.

Is it any wonder that Poles are nationalist and want to protect their borders.

Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary previously divided the country between themselves, removing it from the map of Europe, and here, Germans/Nazis/Russians/ /Bolshevik Jews are also trying to decapitate it as a society.

LOL. Yes, and I am about to write an opus on how to perform a removal of colon polyps through throat. And why not? If Sokolov is military historian than I am sure as hell a medical doctor. I will also suggest to you--read more about WW II from such sources as Patton's Diaries, employ neocon literature, Masha Gessen could be of help too. In general, continue to live in in a BS bubble.

Why don’t you try to get what he says in Wiki corrected. Or is something stopping you?

The PATRIOT system had a bug related to time keeping and floating-point representation which made it progressively less accurate the longer it had been turned on.

http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html

A lot of those old military computers were quite primitive given that they had to use Mil-Spec components in their construction. The machines did not have built-in floating point so all the arithmetic used scaled integers. The size of the registers was not large compared to today as well.

This really isn’t a bug, it is the result of having numbers with a low precision (only 2**24 total possible represented values) and no realistic floating point limiting what algorithms could be utilized.

When I first got a job at Hughes in 82 after working at Burroughs, I was amazed at how seemingly backward the computers inside missiles and aircraft cockpit systems were.

Of course I do not know that question, rather positive nobody outside of North Korea does either, and, this is the thought, not quite sure that the regime there knows that either.

I believe there is a disconnect between reality and regime’s thinking there.

It all, really, boils down to how willing the people there are, REALLY, to sacrifice themselves for the regime.
Because of their race, specific history and, the most important, peculiarities of the regime, it is really hard to know.
Would they pull Saipan/Okinawa ….or fall apart at first bombs?

Now…..looking at examples since the fall of Soviet Union I, somehow, suspect, they would fold fast.
And that’s the primary reason the regime is pursuing nuclear capability. It gives the regime a very good chance against “regime change”. Or, in practical terms, it requires around 10 000 people on regime side, tops, to have it functional and operational. Not more. Any regime can have that level of loyalists.

The other deterrent, I suspect, simply isn’t working anymore.
That massed artillery I just don’t think it’s as efficient as it’s been advertised.
Even more for the rest of the military there.

So….in practical terms………….
Quick, intense air raid on critical regime points. Classical, not nuclear (including Daisy Cutters). It could, if the top leadership is taken out, collapse the regime.

That’s what carriers are for, with planes in South Korea and Japan.

And, the most important thing now.

Trump is the man who approves such action.
Think about it for a moment.

Moreover, WW II was not about Jews and Holocaust as US Jews try to convince many impressionable (and badly educated) Americans.

What was it about?

{What was it about?}

Lebensraum:

So that all the Slavic peoples ( Untermenschen) West of the Urals could be exterminated and the rich, fertile lands thus denuded of their native populations could be colonized by the supposedly Germanic ‘Master Race’.

Lebensraum:So that all the Slavic peoples ( Untermenschen) West of the Urals could be exterminated and the rich, fertile lands thus denuded of their native populations could be colonized by the supposedly Germanic ‘Master Race’.

Why don’t you try to get what he says in Wiki corrected. Or is something stopping you?

Perhaps this might be stopping him:

CAMERA, Rewriting History on Wikipedia

A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.

A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), provided to The Electronic Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a “war” on Wikipedia.

Et tu, Geo? This thread already reeks of idle speculation and axe-grinding. Please don't add to the fake news. Wikipedia in no way implicates Nazis or Germans in Katyn. And why would anyone need to? The Nazis were committing their own massacres of Polish elite elsewhere.

Though Kim seems pretty wacky his motives may be rational. Kim says we intend regime change in NK and that is very plausible, since NK is an Axis of Evil country that could supply Iran with weapons that threaten Israel. Nuclear weapons are essentially DEFENSIVE tools, as argued plausibly by John Mearsheimer and others. We don’t want Iran to have nukes, not because we fear they would use them to attack Israel, but because we fear they would adequately deter an attack by the US or Israel.

There is a lot of historical back-and-forth as to whom was responsible for the Katyn Massacre.

Given the predominance of Jews who were supportive of Josef Stalin's goal to liberate central & western Europe from capitalism, I tend to be very open to the idea that Red Army did the Katyn massacre and blamed the act on the Germans.

For me, it was likely a Bolshevik derived False Flag killing.

If such makes me a Fool for Rurik, so be it. (Sigh) I am more inclined to get word out as to who really did 9/11. Hint: It wasn't Islamo-Fascists!

Selah Suvorov & The Chief Culprit Ought To Become a DVD Documentary.

“it was likely a Bolshevik derived False Flag killing”

No doubt it was a Stalin-ordered massacre but in this case it is not fair to blame Jews. Recall that it was Stalin who “betrayed the revolution” (according to Trotskyists and most Jews) by purging the grossly disproportionate influence of Jews from the party. Stalin and Beria were both (Orthodox) Greek.

OTOH Stalin did not purge all Jews and, e.g., the Jew Lazar Kaganovich was responsible for the “Holodomor”.

It has to be read in Russian, the same as a poem about little girl and SS guard--a truly powerful experience. Having said that: the pretext of Benjamin Okopnik introduction to Evtushenko's poem is full of shit and a typical exaggeration beyond all reasons, especially that:

and the subsequent injustice of the government’s refusal to raise a monument to the thousands of Jews executed there by the Nazi troops,produced a tremendous effect in Russia.

No, it didn't, because before any such monument to Holocaust Jewish victims to be erected, monument to millions upon millions of specifically Slav "untermensch" has to come up. You just demonstrated perfectly how Jews themselves continue to discredit a tragedy and a trauma of Holocaust by pretending that they were the only "special" group, yet, if memory doesn't fail me, and it doesn't, millions upon millions of Slavs were shot, starved, exterminated in concentration camps, shipped as slaves to the Third Reich and, if ever in Russia, unless being in some faux-intellectual "liberal circles" (a minute minority), try to peddle this "tremendous effect" to Russians or Belorussians, or Ukrainians who lost generations of men and women in that War. At best they will laugh to your face. So, no--there was no "tremendous effect", because during Soviet times, apart from issues with Israel and Zionism, Soviet view of Great Patriotic War was very simple--it touched everyone. This is not to mention that hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who fought in the Red Army and died together with their Russian, Belorussian, Kazakh, Azeri, Chuvash, Armenian etc. comrades are not Holocaust victims--they were warriors, many of whom fought valiantly. Half-a-million of them.

For many American Jews today Holocaust is just business and an excellent whip to whip real war ignorant American population into proper ideological shape my means of guilt. The same way as this Okopnik-fella does. Moreover, WW II was not about Jews and Holocaust as US Jews try to convince many impressionable (and badly educated) Americans.

Good that you're "open to the idea," since the Russians admitted it in the 1990's. Yes, the Bolshies used German weapons and ammo to implicate Hitler. But there's quite a difference between Red Army and NKVD, just as between Wehrmacht and SS.

Wiki says, "The Katyn massacre...was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs"...), in April and May 1940. Though the killings took place at several different locations, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered.

The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's [a Georgian Orthodox, not a Jew] proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader, Joseph Stalin. .... Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were Polish intelligentsia that the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests."

Whether Beria was a Jew seems unknown. One could be a Greek Orthodox by upbringing and a Jew by ethnicity and an atheist by profession. I am told that “Lavarente” is likely a variation on “Lev” or “Levi”.

This is a little confusing after the crash, but I think you posted this here, TY: http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/10/30/540349/Israel-settlers-British-activists-Khalil
I shared with my church group, who can only deal with one cognitive dissonance [Palestine], and are astoundingly MSM, party-line indoctrinated on Syria, Crimea, Russian collusion, etc.

Why don’t you try to get what he says in Wiki corrected. Or is something stopping you?

Perhaps this might be stopping him:

CAMERA, Rewriting History on Wikipedia

A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.

A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), provided to The Electronic Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a “war” on Wikipedia.

In addition to rewriting Palestinian history, perhaps these people are keen on ensuring the evil Nazis are viewed as the culprits behind the Katyn massacres?

Or, as you would put it, "Can’t get it wrong if you blame dem Nazis.”

Et tu, Geo? This thread already reeks of idle speculation and axe-grinding. Please don’t add to the fake news. Wikipedia in no way implicates Nazis or Germans in Katyn. And why would anyone need to? The Nazis were committing their own massacres of Polish elite elsewhere.

So that all the Slavic peoples ( Untermenschen) West of the Urals could be exterminated and the rich, fertile lands thus denuded of their native populations could be colonized by the supposedly Germanic 'Master Race'.

Lebensraum:
So that all the Slavic peoples ( Untermenschen) West of the Urals could be exterminated and the rich, fertile lands thus denuded of their native populations could be colonized by the supposedly Germanic ‘Master Race’.

The real version, not the revisionist version proffered by uneducated neo-Nazi, neo-Hitlerite revisionists and apologists for the genocidal Nazi Germany.

Real history: ~15 million Soviet citizens, overwhelmingly Slavic peoples, were killed/murdered by Nazi invaders directly or indirectly. Not counting POWs, 3.5 million of whom (60% of total) were killed by Nazis: shot to death, starved to death, left to die from untreated wounds,.....

Whether Beria was a Jew seems unknown. One could be a Greek Orthodox by upbringing and a Jew by ethnicity and an atheist by profession. I am told that "Lavarente" is likely a variation on "Lev" or "Levi".

By your [lack of] linguistic logic Tolstoy was a Hebrew. (Whether “Anon” is a POS bot is unknown. I am told that Anon is likely a variation of A-hole.)

From what I read, the US had information on Soviet assets in NATO (from a defector) who were rolled up when Star Wars was getting into high gear. The Russian scientists didn't think a lot of hocus-pocus like X-ray lasers were viable but the USSR was flying blind because their assets working near those fields were gone. They didn't know if all the hype coming from the US was garbage or if there really had been breakthroughs. That helped push Gorbachev into a more subservient bargaining position.

They didn’t know if all the hype coming from the US was garbage or if there really had been breakthroughs.

This may mean that Reagan was not the only person on Earth who believed in the reality of the Star Wars.

Philip Giraldi says:
October 4, 2017 at 12:35 pm GMT • 100 Words@Randal
I would note that antiwar.com is particularly prone to politically correct censorship. They have not run either of my two articles, presumably because they are offended by the content and language employed. They don’t seem to get it that unless we directly confront the true purveyors of war in the Middle East, which is a tight group of Jewish pundits and organizations working in collusion with the Israeli government, we will never have “no war.”

Et tu, Geo? This thread already reeks of idle speculation and axe-grinding. Please don't add to the fake news. Wikipedia in no way implicates Nazis or Germans in Katyn. And why would anyone need to? The Nazis were committing their own massacres of Polish elite elsewhere.

Et tu, Geo?

You’re right, RobinG. I had posted my comment without actually reading the wiki entry for the Katyn Massacre. After having done so, it clearly lays the blame squarely on the Soviets and the NKVD.

Thanks, G.
On Nov. 5, the local PSL, among others, is commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution, promoted with Lenin poster - https://www.facebook.com/events/144233619642436
One could only hope they had some sharp criticism, but I doubt it. Those guys are dedicated idealogues.
Just realized, that is about the time of all the threatened Antifa actions, which they're billing as non-violent (to get #Resist on board, I guess). Useful idiots everywhere. Surreal.

Et tu, Geo? This thread already reeks of idle speculation and axe-grinding. Please don't add to the fake news. Wikipedia in no way implicates Nazis or Germans in Katyn. And why would anyone need to? The Nazis were committing their own massacres of Polish elite elsewhere.

Good for you RobinG. But I have to warn you, I don’t think you are going to go far in the Dark Side with this attitude.

There may be some here who would like to see Israel nuked but I doubt that it would be most of those here. I would say that most of the Unz readers and commenters would like to see Israel stop meddling in US affairs, stop receiving any aid from the US taxpayers and cease to be the main belligerent in the ME, especially to the degree that the US becomes involved.

Lebensraum:So that all the Slavic peoples ( Untermenschen) West of the Urals could be exterminated and the rich, fertile lands thus denuded of their native populations could be colonized by the supposedly Germanic ‘Master Race’.

Moreover, WW II was not about Jews and Holocaust as US Jews try to convince many impressionable (and badly educated) Americans [like Avery].

{no, seriously, not the propaganda version.}

Yes, seriously.

The real version, not the revisionist version proffered by uneducated neo-Nazi, neo-Hitlerite revisionists and apologists for the genocidal Nazi Germany.

Real history: ~15 million Soviet citizens, overwhelmingly Slavic peoples, were killed/murdered by Nazi invaders directly or indirectly. Not counting POWs, 3.5 million of whom (60% of total) were killed by Nazis: shot to death, starved to death, left to die from untreated wounds,…..

A combination of that audience zero influence on the subject plus the belief that our leaders still have enough of brains and responsibility to prevent a nuclear war.That for non-believers of major religions. Did I say belief? Talking about faith.....some irony.For believers (proper faith that is...), what's to worry about? Any version of heaven/reincarnation is O.K.Then that "ostrich in sand" thing.And then you have that lunatic fringe (but rather loud) about Gaia and humans polluting all that (death wish of sort).Then people who don't think about anything past today.And people not thinking at all.....

Etc.

The only way out of this conundrum is a moderate nuclear device killing around, say, a million people.That could...not will..could....make a difference in attitude.For a couple of weeks that is, most likely. Especially before a major sporting event.

What is truly tragic is someone who is willing to defend the indefensible. Someone who is being played for a fool. Someone who is someone else’s useful tool. Someone who is willing to support Zionist policies that lead to the death and destruction of over a million innocent people. Someone who has no qualms seeing his supposed native country pay tribute to a foreign power, whose leader stands before his people’s representatives and receives 29 standing ovations for defying the policies of his own president. Now, that is tragic.

This is an important and informative article. It deserves a wider audience. Does anyone here know why it might not reach a larger audience?

Does anyone here know why it might not reach a larger audience?

I might have a theory of sort.

A combination of that audience zero influence on the subject plus the belief that our leaders still have enough of brains and responsibility to prevent a nuclear war.
That for non-believers of major religions. Did I say belief? Talking about faith…..some irony.
For believers (proper faith that is…), what’s to worry about? Any version of heaven/reincarnation is O.K.
Then that “ostrich in sand” thing.
And then you have that lunatic fringe (but rather loud) about Gaia and humans polluting all that (death wish of sort).
Then people who don’t think about anything past today.
And people not thinking at all…..

Etc.

The only way out of this conundrum is a moderate nuclear device killing around, say, a million people.
That could…not will..could….make a difference in attitude.
For a couple of weeks that is, most likely. Especially before a major sporting event.

In a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee as the only provided option in a controlled election process in a non-democracy, we can only vote for the "perceived" lesser evil, or not vote at all. Either ways, we are stuck with whoever is foisted on us.

there is no public discontent against them

How do you figure?

Those holding placards chanting slogans are not public discontent, they are vocal minorities in the eyes of the administration and the Congress because the same lot of politicians got returned to the office no matter what those vocal minorities do.

If the Americans really want to show their public discontent, start a revolution, overthrow the current oligarch plutocratic system and establishment, and start all over again for a real democracy.

You're right, RobinG. I had posted my comment without actually reading the wiki entry for the Katyn Massacre. After having done so, it clearly lays the blame squarely on the Soviets and the NKVD.

As a result, I am prepared to retract my previous comment.

Apologies.

Thanks, G.
On Nov. 5, the local PSL, among others, is commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution, promoted with Lenin poster – https://www.facebook.com/events/144233619642436
One could only hope they had some sharp criticism, but I doubt it. Those guys are dedicated idealogues.
Just realized, that is about the time of all the threatened Antifa actions, which they’re billing as non-violent (to get #Resist on board, I guess). Useful idiots everywhere. Surreal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVDhe Polish Operation of the Soviet NKVD security service in 1937–1938 was a mass operation of the NKVD carried out against purported Polish agents in the Soviet Union during the period of the Great Purge. It was ordered by the Politburo against the so-called "Polish spies" and customarily interpreted by the NKVD officials as relating to "absolutely all Poles". It resulted in the sentencing of 139,835 people, and summary executions of 111,091 ethnic Poles,[3][4] as well as those accused of working for Poland.[5] The operation was implemented according to NKVD Order № 00485 signed by Nikolai Yezhov.[6] The majority of the victims were ethnically Polish but not all, according to Timothy Snyder.[7] The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry.[6] In order to speed up the process the NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names.

Clearly in the SU there was strong animus to kill Poles just three years before Katyn.

Clearly there was some coordination between NKVD and Gestapo after 1939 occupation of Poland.

There were Gestapo-NKVD Conferences held in Poland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo–NKVD_conferencesThe next series of meetings began in December 1939, a month after the first transfer of Polish prisoners of war. The conferences were held in occupied Kraków in the General Government on 6–7 December 1939; and continued for the next two days in the resort town of Zakopane in the Tatra Mountains of southern Poland (100 km from Kraków) on 8–9 December 1939. The Zakopane Conference is the most remembered. From the Soviet side, several higher officers of the NKVD secret police participated in the meetings, while the German hosts provided a group of experts from the Gestapo

This one is the best known, and took place in Zakopane,[14] starting on 20 February 1940[4] in the villa "Pan Tadeusz", located at the Droga do Białego street close to the Dolina Białego valley. The German side was represented by Adolf Eichmann and an official by the name of Zimmermann, who later became chief of the Radom District of the General Government territory. The Soviet delegation was headed by Grigoriy Litvinov with—among others—Rita Zimmerman, director of a Kolyma gold mine.

And here is Red Army and Wehrmacht 1939 victory parade in PolandПарад на Вермахта и Червената армия Полшаhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0-a3JgB_Q8Germans did the AB-Aktion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_AB-Aktion_in_PolandThe mass murder of Polish leaders, politicians, artists, aristocrats, the intelligentsia, and people suspected of potential anti-Nazi activity began in fall of 1939,[1] and was seen by Nazi Germany as a pre-emptive measure to keep the Polish resistance scattered and to prevent the Poles from revolting during the planned German invasion of France.[5] The anti-Polish AB-Aktion was prepared by Hans Frank, the commander of the General Government. It was also discussed with the Soviet officials during a series of secretive Gestapo-NKVD Conferences.

In the spring and summer of 1940, more than 30,000 Poles were arrested by the Nazi authorities in German-occupied central Poland.[2] About 7,000 of them including community leaders, professors, teachers and priests (labeled as suspected of criminal activities) were subsequently massacred secretly at various locations including at the Palmiry forest complex near Palmiry.[3][4] The others were sent to German concentration camps.

Is it possible that Germans knew about Katyn and somehow were involved in it? I doubt it. If they knew about it why did they wait till 1943 to discover the graves? Did they provide logistic support? Supposedly ammunition used in Katyn was German? I do not think it means anything. Katyn and other sites where Polish POW's, police officers and intelligentsia were killed (circa 22,000) in Spring of 1940 were on Soviet Territories on Soviet. The order were issued in Moscow. Soviet Union bears total responsibility. Was there a Jewish angle? In everything Soviet Union did there was a Jewish angle. Did they hate and fear Poles because of being Russian, Jews or communists? It is a combination of all three.

After the defeat of France by Germany and when SU annexed Baltic States SU took custody of Polish POW who were interned in the Baltic States. These POW's were not killed by Soviets. Why? Perhaps Stalin no longer considered Poles a threat after France's defeat. No longer France and allied with her Poland could punish SU for being the culprit in staring the WWII.

An excellent commentary on German/Bolshevik cooperation in the destruction of Poland.

Is it any wonder that Poles are nationalist and want to protect their borders.

Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary previously divided the country between themselves, removing it from the map of Europe, and here, Germans/Nazis/Russians/ /Bolshevik Jews are also trying to decapitate it as a society.

The real version, not the revisionist version proffered by uneducated neo-Nazi, neo-Hitlerite revisionists and apologists for the genocidal Nazi Germany.

Real history: ~15 million Soviet citizens, overwhelmingly Slavic peoples, were killed/murdered by Nazi invaders directly or indirectly. Not counting POWs, 3.5 million of whom (60% of total) were killed by Nazis: shot to death, starved to death, left to die from untreated wounds,.....

{Troll: L.K}

Schweinhund.

(lots of Paulus’s invading Nazi Schweinhunden fertilizing the rich soil of Volgograd (nee Stalingrad), after being chopped up and biocharred by the Red Army)

As you know, it's challenging for even above average intellects & (moral) consciences to deal with one (1) matter of Corporate Media-engineered matters of cognitive dissonance. (Daily, dumb goyim have Legions of cognitive dissonance upon their plate for digestion)

For example, on October 26th, our ZUSA Executive Branch was obligated to release all JFK murder' s classified documents.

President Bonespur * honorably vowed to release all classified JFK files but then the Deep State intervened and kept some documents "classified."

(Zigh) Cognitive dissonance anyone?

1. President Bonespur a hero for trying to help citizens determine who managed the JFK assassination / coup!

Lastly, RobinG, I am a life long Byzantine Catholic Church member. Given the predominant impulse to unconditionally support the Jewish state of Israel, there are very few Catholic parishioners with whom I can sincerely share historical and political thought.

(Zigh) My biggest worry for them has been outlined by the philosopher Friedrych Nietzsche.

Nietzsche focused upon the "Will to Power," and projected a need for the human specie to evolve into the "Superman."

Nietzsche went so far as to project that Jesus Christ was a cunning Hebrew creation designed to keep non-Jews committed to softy virtues which would not THREATEN Jewish supremacy.

In other words, RobinG, let the sheep-like (Dumb) Goyim practice love of neighbor, enemy, forgiveness, mercy, et all, until hearts are content... and the Wolf rules and takes the booty!

(Zigh) Of course I am not a Nietzsche scholar and in the end, I believe be went bonkers. However, I am fairly confident that his dark philosophy has resonated with what the Apostle Paul described as the forces and principalities of evil practitioners.

“Americans…do not know war except as something that happens elsewhere and to foreigners, requiring only that the U.S. step in on occasion and bail things out, or screw things up depending on one’s point of view.”

Civilian death (‘Collateral damage’) a thing of the past thanks to precision JDAMs. Promise. ’Régime change’ a laudable public service. Like flu inoculation. Reliable, profitable, and endless. The ‘War on Terror’: perfect fulfillment of Oceania’s perpetual burden.

“…comforting to learn that the United States cannot be physically attacked with either nuclear or conventional weapons no matter what our government does overseas, but is it true?”

Now? It’d only take one not-quite-good-enough anti-missile. A software error. A server shut-down. A lax operator. Why bother with missiles? One shipping container could do it. A careless Customs shift.

“…the real danger is…war is thinkable, even nuclear war, if one cannot be touched by it.”

Death and ruin make war unthinkable. Spared either, decadence infects a host. Killing becomes as unproblematic as breathing. Entertainment. Or, better, efficacious social policy, a Roman circus.

Why go to war? Territory? Booty? Dynastic squabble? Revenge? Honor? Is there any legitimate reason? Nuclear weapons make ‘total war’ instantaneous. Suicide. Or homicide on a scale that makes the devil blush.

“Americans…do not know war except as something that happens elsewhere and to foreigners, requiring only that the U.S. step in on occasion and bail things out, or screw things up depending on one’s point of view.”

Civilian death (‘Collateral damage’) a thing of the past thanks to precision JDAMs. Promise. ’Régime change’ a laudable public service. Like flu inoculation. Reliable, profitable, and endless. The ‘War on Terror’: perfect fulfillment of Oceania’s perpetual burden.

“…comforting to learn that the United States cannot be physically attacked with either nuclear or conventional weapons no matter what our government does overseas, but is it true?”

Now? It’d only take one not-quite-good-enough anti-missile. A software error. A server shut-down. A lax operator. Why bother with missiles? One shipping container could do it. A careless Customs shift.

“…the real danger is…war is thinkable, even nuclear war, if one cannot be touched by it.”

Death and ruin make war unthinkable. Spared either, decadence infects a host. Killing becomes as unproblematic as breathing. Entertainment. Or, better, efficacious social policy, a Roman circus.

Why go to war? Territory? Booty? Dynastic squabble? Revenge? Honor? Is there any legitimate reason? Nuclear weapons make ‘total war’ instantaneous. Suicide. Or homicide on a scale that makes the devil blush.

Why go to war? Territory? Booty? Dynastic squabble? Revenge? Honor?

None of the above, Incy. Ever since 9/11, we go to war to enhance the security of the villa in the jungle, executing PNAC’s gameplan of taking out 7 Muslim countries in 5 years… and you know it.

Why go to war? Territory? Booty? Dynastic squabble? Revenge? Honor?
“None of the above, Incy. Ever since 9/11, we go to war to enhance the security of the villa in the jungle, executing PNAC’s gameplan of taking out 7 Muslim countries in 5 years… and you know it.”

The US nuclear arsenal, MAD, and anti-missile capacity (Giraldi’s subject) is all about Israel? Must have missed that part of the piece. Everything the US undertakes is for Israel? Recent events in North Korea?

No fan of ‘the Lobby’, PNAC or ME wars, as the archive shows. “And you know it.”

Desperate? Can’t explain why ‘the Lobby’ is dwarfed by virtually every other special interest?

It is typical to assume that your adversary will attack you at your most defensible best. But history shows that is not the case. On that line of thinking, do the Norks even need ICBMs to attack the US? The Norks have be quite adept at sanitizing arms shipments to locations of known clients. So is it that far fetched that they could use that capability to smuggle containers with WMD on board to be triggered at their convenience? I think not.

This is a little confusing after the crash, but I think you posted this here, TY: http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/10/30/540349/Israel-settlers-British-activists-Khalil
I shared with my church group, who can only deal with one cognitive dissonance [Palestine], and are astoundingly MSM, party-line indoctrinated on Syria, Crimea, Russian collusion, etc.

RobinG,

As you know, it’s challenging for even above average intellects & (moral) consciences to deal with one (1) matter of Corporate Media-engineered matters of cognitive dissonance. (Daily, dumb goyim have Legions of cognitive dissonance upon their plate for digestion)

For example, on October 26th, our ZUSA Executive Branch was obligated to release all JFK murder’ s classified documents.

President Bonespur * honorably vowed to release all classified JFK files but then the Deep State intervened and kept some documents “classified.”

(Zigh) Cognitive dissonance anyone?

1. President Bonespur a hero for trying to help citizens determine who managed the JFK assassination / coup!

Lastly, RobinG, I am a life long Byzantine Catholic Church member. Given the predominant impulse to unconditionally support the Jewish state of Israel, there are very few Catholic parishioners with whom I can sincerely share historical and political thought.

(Zigh) My biggest worry for them has been outlined by the philosopher Friedrych Nietzsche.

Nietzsche focused upon the “Will to Power,” and projected a need for the human specie to evolve into the “Superman.”

Nietzsche went so far as to project that Jesus Christ was a cunning Hebrew creation designed to keep non-Jews committed to softy virtues which would not THREATEN Jewish supremacy.

In other words, RobinG, let the sheep-like (Dumb) Goyim practice love of neighbor, enemy, forgiveness, mercy, et all, until hearts are content… and the Wolf rules and takes the booty!

(Zigh) Of course I am not a Nietzsche scholar and in the end, I believe be went bonkers. However, I am fairly confident that his dark philosophy has resonated with what the Apostle Paul described as the forces and principalities of evil practitioners.

Two points here: (1) Is there any rational expectation that Pyongyang would seriously negotiate? So that's one point.

(2) The other is something that got out between the lines years ago, but if it's true it's so highly classified that a guy could end up in Gitmo for just thinking it. Still, I recall it was said at one time some years ago. And here it is: maybe the only way to really "hit" incoming ICBMs is to forget about a bullet hitting a bullet, what you do is you get as close as you can and then you explode nukes in the neighborhood. That would rattle the cage of the incoming enough that it would drop down wherever it was flying, like into the Pacific, say, between Hawaii and the mainland. I think this came out in the context of the "defensive" anti-missile missiles set to take off from the controversial sites in Poland and the Baltics. That would be part of the reason why Russians would never buy that those missile bases (Poland and Baltics) could ever be honestly described as purely "defensive" (like against missiles coming from Iran was the story). Remember, when all this stuff was first ramping up more than half a century ago, "mothers for survival of children" or whatever, led by Linus Pauling ... the war hawks' main slogan was "Better dead than Red"? Remember that, anyone?

So thank you, Mr. Giraldi, for helping to bring this out into the open. Americans -- earthlings in general -- should know ... I think ... maybe ...

If the “secret” that we might be mounting nuke warheads on missiles for defensive purposes was that GTMO-worthy there would be standing room only in all of Cuba. The Nike missile program was doing that back in the 50s and it isn’t a state secret. They were designed (in all their variants) to intercept planes and missiles/warheads at/near terminal phase. Check out Nike Hercules in Wiki.

None of the above, Incy. Ever since 9/11, we go to war to enhance the security of the villa in the jungle, executing PNAC's gameplan of taking out 7 Muslim countries in 5 years... and you know it.

Why go to war? Territory? Booty? Dynastic squabble? Revenge? Honor?
“None of the above, Incy. Ever since 9/11, we go to war to enhance the security of the villa in the jungle, executing PNAC’s gameplan of taking out 7 Muslim countries in 5 years… and you know it.”

The US nuclear arsenal, MAD, and anti-missile capacity (Giraldi’s subject) is all about Israel? Must have missed that part of the piece. Everything the US undertakes is for Israel? Recent events in North Korea?

No fan of ‘the Lobby’, PNAC or ME wars, as the archive shows. “And you know it.”

Desperate? Can’t explain why ‘the Lobby’ is dwarfed by virtually every other special interest?

These two reasons were cited by Benny Avi, who wrote the article Meet the new Axis of Evil published in the New York Post.

Now that Iraq has been successfully regime changed, Benny was good enough to update David Frum's old AofE list with one provided by Israeli DM Avigdor Lieberman:

Pointing to Iran’s alliance with Kim and Assad, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently told the Israeli news service Walla that North Korea, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah make up an “axis of evil.”

Turns out Dubya’s old phrase, which has come in for years of criticism and scorn, is useful after all. Maybe it’s time to revive it.

http://nypost.com/2017/08/24/meet-the-new-axis-of-evil/

Desperate? Can’t explain why ‘the Lobby’ is dwarfed by virtually every other special interest?

Dwarfed? You've got to be joking, Incy. Forget about what geo has to say about the power of The Lobby. Let's hear how former Senator Chuck Hegel once put it:

Why go to war? Territory? Booty? Dynastic squabble? Revenge? Honor?
“None of the above, Incy. Ever since 9/11, we go to war to enhance the security of the villa in the jungle, executing PNAC’s gameplan of taking out 7 Muslim countries in 5 years… and you know it.”

The US nuclear arsenal, MAD, and anti-missile capacity (Giraldi’s subject) is all about Israel? Must have missed that part of the piece. Everything the US undertakes is for Israel? Recent events in North Korea?

No fan of ‘the Lobby’, PNAC or ME wars, as the archive shows. “And you know it.”

Desperate? Can’t explain why ‘the Lobby’ is dwarfed by virtually every other special interest?

Recent events in North Korea?

Wasn’t NK one of the 3 countries that constituted the infamous “Axis of Evil”?

“States like these [Iraq, Iran, North Korea] and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” – GWB

And you do recall who put those words in W’s mouth, don’t you? Why, it was none other than neocon favourite, David Frum. We know this thanks to his wife who bragged online to some of her friends.

These two reasons were cited by Benny Avi, who wrote the article Meet the new Axis of Evil published in the New York Post.

Now that Iraq has been successfully regime changed, Benny was good enough to update David Frum’s old AofE list with one provided by Israeli DM Avigdor Lieberman:

Pointing to Iran’s alliance with Kim and Assad, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently told the Israeli news service Walla that North Korea, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah make up an “axis of evil.”

Turns out Dubya’s old phrase, which has come in for years of criticism and scorn, is useful after all. Maybe it’s time to revive it.

Recent events in North Korea?
“Wasn’t NK one of the 3 countries that constituted the infamous “Axis of Evil”?… And you do recall who put those words in W’s mouth, don’t you? Why, it was none other than neocon favourite, David Frum…And why do you think good ol’ David included NK in the axis?”

Golly. Did it have something to do with the ongoing, unresolved Korean War? 36,574 US dead? 103,284 wounded? A stalemate that threatens ally South Korea? Could that be it? No, of course not. David Frum hypnotized GW Bush. His wife said so.

Desperate? Can’t explain why ‘the Lobby’ is dwarfed by virtually every other special interest?
“Dwarfed? You’ve got to be joking, Incy. Forget about what geo has to say about the power of The Lobby. Let’s hear how former Senator Chuck Hegel once put it: “the Jewish lobby intimidated Congress””

Answer the question. Why is ‘Lobby’ money dwarfed by virtually every other special interest?

“The Jewish lobby” obviously felt Hagel unsympathetic and went all out to discredit him. Inexcusable slander disserving condemnation. That doesn’t change the lobbying race and rewards.

What do the figures say? Was Hagel’s vote to repeal Glass-Steagall connected with his top sector contributions? Wartime tax cuts (Cheney’s reward)? His vote for financial bailout? Entities (contributors) who benefited from deregulation screwed the pooch and benefited again to the tune of $7,000,000,000,000. Courtesy Mr. & Mrs. US Taxpayer.

Whad’ya think Geo? Is $7 trillion more that $3.8 billion? David Frum plan the bailout too? Ask his wife.

Surprising Hagel’s Defense support was so low. Did they discretely campaign against and help bounce him? He left the Senate before ObamaCare, thus the low Health figure.

“These two reasons were cited by Benny Avi, who wrote the article Meet the new Axis of Evil published in the New York Post”